Deadly Desire
by Bella Winter Rose
Summary: A beloved member of CSI is dead, under myserious circumstances. It's up to the new girl, Marlena Reagan, to figure out what the hell happened. My first CSI fic! COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED! ENJOY!
1. A Familiar Face

Marlena Reagan kneeled in front of her first dead body and felt her heart jump into her throat and all her blood rush to her feet. The face was familiar…she knew it somehow…but from where?

"Oh God," came the frail whisper of her good friend and fellow CSI, Sara Sidle, who was standing behind Marlena and had arrived late as usual. "It's Gil."

Marlena looked over her shoulder at the thirtysomething CSI2, her sad brown eyes looking sadder than usual. "You know him, Sara?" she asked softly.

Sara's hand went to the base of her throat and she fled the room, totally unlike her. Marlena, focused on her work, didn't go after her, though she heard someone do so. 

Before tugging on her rubber gloves, she used a scrunchy to pull back her long dirty-blonde hair. She pulled the vic's face toward hers gently. Curling grayish hair cropped close, a pensive expression even in death, Marlena suddenly knew who this was.

"Doctor Gilbert Thatcher Grissom," said Detective Kenyon Browning, coming to kneel beside Marlena and confirming what she didn't want to know. "Former Las Vegas Criminalist and expert entomologist. Retired from CSI two years ago due to a degenerative hearing disorder called autosclorosis. Taught entomology at Cromwell University of the Deaf. Was found like this, in his living room, apparently asphyxiated. There were no signs of forced entry anywhere."

"There's the blue tinge," Marlena ran her pointer finger around the outline of his pale lips and nodded in agreement. "The blue in the fingers, too. No foaming around the mouth." She tuned to Kenyon. "This man was almost famous at CSI. I've seen his picture in the lobby. Hell, I worked with him for three, four years before he retired." She glanced around the room. "Where did Sara go?"

Kenyon pointed outside the doorway, "She didn't tell you that she'd been working with Grissom since she began here. The man was like a father to her. You know how she always says, 'smiling offsets the gagging reflex'?"

"Yeah."

"Let's just say that she's got nothing to smile about."

Marlena softened, "Poor Sara." Carefully, she put Grissom's hand down and laid it on his chest. "I can't tell time of death, but he's already in rigor mortis. Even so, Doctor Orestes will have the true answer and confirmation." Even through her latex gloves she could feel how cold his hands were. "Such a sweet man. He was pretty nice to me."

"Gil was like everyone's dad." Kenyon stood and ran his fingers through his blue-black hair. He wiped his hands on his sandstone-colored suit as if he'd touched something dirty. "It's a shame."

Marlena stood as well and but her let's-get-down-to-business face on. "There were no witnesses?"

"Nope. Only the woman who found the body. She's talking to Detective Sawandi. Her name is--" Kenyon glanced at his notebook, "--Solange Tanguy."

"Well, you know what they say: whoever finds the body automatically becomes the first suspect."

Kenyon pursed his lips in doubt and read some more from his notebook, "Solange is twenty-three years old, from Trinidad and speaks little English. That's why we got Sawandi; he's fluent in French. She's Gil's cleaning lady, been working for him only a year."

"Does she have a key?"

Kenyon nodded, "She had access to one. Gil had one of those hide-a-keys."

Marlena felt sorry for Solange, who, despite her true age, looked no older than sixteen. Very short and thin with large, black-button eyes, from all the way across the room, she could see how terrified the girl was, hugging herself and tearing slightly. Her beautiful skin was the color of un-ground coffee. She wore a turquoise knee-length dress and the cleanest pair of white tennis shoes she'd ever seen. A beat-up hemp purse with a frayed strap dangled from her shoulder. Her ebony hair was tied back tight in a figure-eight knot at the base of her skull. Not a hair was out of place and Marlena figured she didn't do much cleaning today.

"You don't think the cleaning lady did it?" Kenyon raised an eyebrow--he knew the kind of thought process Marlena had. This woman didn't rule anyone out. 

"You know what I think, Ken," Marlena's bittersweet chocolate eyes met with Kenyon's emerald ones with hidden meaning. "Do me a favor? Keep Gil Grissom's former team out of the investigation. Replace Sara with Breeze Hamelin and whoever else has been assigned…Stokes, I think. Instead of Stokes get Sasha Zarek. Have Catherine Willows and Warrick Brown notified of Gil's death."

"Uh, sure," Kenyon said, trying to hide his surprise at Marlena's taking charge of things. This was her first field case but obviously she seemed more in control than Sara Sidle, her superior. "You wanted Hamelin instead of Sidle?"

"Yes," Marlena said, kneeling beside Gil Grissom's body. "She's just as experienced as Sara is. Clearly, Sara can't handle this now…at least she identified the body. We won't have to call anybody in."

"Wouldn't have done any good," Kenyon sighed. "He's got no living relatives. His mother, Evelyn Elizabeth Grissom, passed away several years ago. His father, Broderick Gilbert Grissom, six years before her. Only child. Several distant relatives scattered everywhere, but no one so closely attached as to claim the body."

"There are no lacerations on the neck. Maybe he was smothered," Marlena observed, running her gloved fingers down Grissom's neck, ignoring Kenyon's last statement. "I wouldn't be surprised if he hadn't had a mark on him." She opened one of Gil's eyes, a soft and serious hazel, though not much showed, "His pupils are dilated severely."

Soft footsteps came up behind her. Marlena stood and turned. Sara, leaning on the shoulder of a police officer, was red-eyed and pallid. 

"Marlena," she whispered. 

"Sara, honey," Marlena took her gloves off and then held Sara's frigid hands in hers. It was as if all the rosy life within this woman had flown out the window. "I'm sorry."

"_I'm_ sorry. I hear I'm being replaced by Breeze Hamelin?"

"And Nick by Sasha."

"Good," Sara replied firmly. "I'm sorry Marlena, but I'm afraid I wouldn't be much help to anyone."

"Oh, honey, I can understand. Go home to your little girl," Marlena squeezed Sara's hands slightly, referring to her daughter, a sweet little four-year-old with her momma's smile and brown curls. Like Catherine Willows, another colleague, Sara was a single mother, except her husband had walked out. "Get some sleep and I'll talk to you later."

"May I say good-bye?"

Marlena couldn't say no. She nodded and stepped away from the body. Sara got on her knees, took Grissom's hand into her own and kissed him once, softly on the cheek. Then she whispered something in his ear and got up quickly. She didn't look back. 

After Sara left, Marlena was on her own. Breeze and Sasha were to report tomorrow for the case. She had Kenyon contact Nick, Warrick and Catherine and the coroner's office had them take the body away. 

"Think I can talk to the cleaning lady?" Marlena asked Adrian Sawandi, a tall and well-built black man with what seemed like a permanent five o'clock shadow who liked to joke around, except when he was on a case. 

"Sure," he said. "Hang on." Sawandi turned to Solange Tanguy and spoke rapid French. Marlena didn't speak French, not one word. Sawandi and Solange carried a short conversation and finally, Sawandi turned to Marlena and said, "She'll speak to you. She's slow in English so try to stay basic."

"Sure," Marlena nodded. She turned to Solange, "Miss Tanguy, how long have you been working for Mr. Grissom?"

"One year," the young maid replied in clear English. 

"Where did he hire you from?"

"Agency…the Quall Agency. For clean ladies, maids. Monsieur Grissom call and I come."

"How often did you come?"

"Twice. In a week."

"Did you move the body when you found him?"

She paused, "_Oui_. I turn him over. To check."

"For what?"

"To check…to see if, ah, he dead."

"Did you _move_ anything?"

"Some glass…" Solange looked a little lost.

_Glass. _"Miss Tanguy, I'm going to need to take a sample of your DNA."

"_D_N_A_?"

"Um…DNA…um, your saliva," Marlena opened her mouth and pointed to her tongue, "I need to take your DNA and…fingerprints to eliminate you as a suspect. As a cleaning lady I think your epithelia would be all over the place."

Solange gave Marlena a vacant expression and turned to Sawandi for help, who quickly jumped in to translate. 

"Ah, _oui_," Solange finally said empathetically and opened her mouth, nodding.

Marlena swapped the inside of the girl's mouth--which contained the whitest teeth she'd probably ever seen, to match her shoes--and then took her prints with much cooperation and without much trouble. Afterwards Marlena let her go. Solange Tanguy left with a promise to help as much as she could and kissed Marlena once on each cheek and did the same to Sawandi. 

"French," Sawandi shrugged in answer to Marlena's quizzical stare. "Well, there's not much else I can do here. Good luck, Reagan."

Marlena blew her bangs out of her face, "Thanks. I have a feeling I'll need it."

After everyone was gone, she began to process the room, dusting powder, luminol, RUVIN and all. She gingerly dusted over Grissom's jars of creepy crawlies--tarantulas, fire ants, scarabs, cockroaches and even a two-headed scorpion that Marlena would see on his desk sometimes. It all made her skin crawl. She did, however, stop to admire the glass-encased butterfly collection. She was familiar with this process of capturing butterflies, drugging them and pinning them up by their wings. Her cousin Del would spend hours examining his own collection of butterflies. Marlena was impressed with Grissom's, which was twice the size of Del's. 

After nearly three hours, Marlena came up nearly empty handed. In the kitchen, she'd sprayed all the knives with luminol and found one tiny drop of blood on just the tip of one paring knife. It turned the point a fluorescent blue-green like a glow stick. Feeling victorious, she bagged the knife. While searching the floor she found tiny pieces of porcelain, thick and white. The floor was wood so it couldn't be chipped tile. She picked the pieces up with a tweezer and dropped them into a small, slender manila envelope. It wasn't until after she had opened up a majority of the cabinets that she noticed that the dishware Grissom kept were white porcelain. 

__

Must've dropped a plate, she concluded as she put the envelopes in her field kit, a silver lunch-box-looking thing that Marlena referred to as her Caboodle. 

Still in the kitchen she swabbed all the glasses left in the sink and found fingerprints and lip marks. One glass in particular had lipstick the color of burgundy around the rim. She bagged it, feeling excited. Marlena discovered a second drop of blood on the floor, so minute that it was almost easy to miss without the RUVIN. She found it beside the shards of porcelain. Happily, she also lifted several prints, but unfortunately, a lot of them looked like Grissom's himself: sneakers and/or loafers, probably between men's ten to twelve. There was a smaller shoe-print, more narrow than the men's sneakers--perhaps a size eight. Though some prints that intrigued Marlena looked like stilettos and from the looks of it, they were a very small size: between a woman's six and four. 

The only other bit of workable blood she found was in a razor next to the sink in the bathroom adjoining to the bedroom and quickly concluded that Grissom had cut himself shaving once but bagged it anyway. She opened the medicine cabinet and was overwhelmed by the amount of pharmaceuticals that Grissom kept. He was obviously a firm believer in herbal remedies. She inspected each bottle carefully, reading the labels, some with very strange names: Pau d'Arco, pycnogenol, bayberry and more. Carefully, she scooped a dozen bottles into separate bags, hoping to lift some prints and maybe get a sample of each pill to be processed.

Scanning the unmade bed in the bedroom, she found several hairs, all long and dark. Grissom's graying but otherwise brownish hair was always snipped short; obviously this was not his. She bagged them and tried to rack he brain to figure out whose hair it was or might be.

_Wait a sec_, she stopped herself, noticing she was making a rookie mistake. _That's not _my_ job. I gotta get these to Greg._

Greg Sanders was the spiky-haired-I-don't-wanna-grow-up resident lab rat at CSI. So devoted to his job was he that while most of his friends were "eye men" or "leg men", he was a self-proclaimed, "DNA man" and insisted on researching the epithelials of the women he dated. Greg was usually eager to the bidding of his superiors, but Marlena knew he was another one close to Grissom and wasn't sure if he'd be up to the task this night, despite his job, or if he'd even heard about the death of Gil Grissom yet. 

_Some people…_she thought bitterly, _need to know how to get on with life._ Marlena knew she was thinking like a cold-hearted bitch but _was _sorry that Grissom was dead and _knew_ how much the death of a loved one hurt, especially when they died of unnatural causes.

But then again, this was why she was the only one who hadn't been replaced on the investigation team for this crime.


	2. Hands

CSI HQ had such a funeral atmosphere when Marlena entered on her next shift at eleven PM that it gave her the chills. Obviously, news got around here quickly. A heavy pall coated the building and the hearts of many of the employees due to the sudden death of Gil Grissom. 

"Marlena."

Breeze Hamelin, the youngest yet one of the smartest in the bureau was sauntering towards her, one hand in the back pocket of her jeans and one playing with her dangly silver earrings. She blew a small bubble with her gum and from far away she looked like a high school student who had wandered off from the tour.

The way she walked and her mood were both described by her name. She was no more than five-five and curvy with wavy hair so blonde it was nearly white, with sapphire eyes. Her facial features and skin were flawless and a small silver ring protruding from her left eyebrow somehow enhanced its perfect arch though some would say it ruined her pretty face. Because her intelligence was valuable to CSI, no one dared to ask her to take her hoop out, for she might leave. No one reprimanded her about her large pieces of jewelry either. Marlena wished she had the guts to wear the stuff Breeze did. 

To those who didn't know her, she was just a tough-talking, gum-chewing, sexy little nymph who could tell you off but still be sweet about it. But to many, she was suggestive of a hummingbird, always twittering and buzzing around; pleasant to be in the company of. 

"What's this about me taking Sara Sidle's place on the Grissom case?" Breeze asked Marlena when she caught up with her. 

Keeping their voices low, Marlena and Breeze walked side-by-side down the hallway towards the break room.

"Shush," Marlena chastised. "Sara's not stable enough to work on this case. I don't want anyone in his former team to be involved. It there may some sort of preferential treatment to be concerned with."

"Sasha told me he's replacing Nick Stokes?"

"He is. Sasha's just as good at fiber analysis as Nick," Marlena said quickly in Sasha's defense. "Breeze, please don't make this hard for me. Sara called me this morning and left me in charge. This is my first operation alone and I really want to do a good job."

The two women entered into the break room and grabbed some coffee. Marlena chugged hers straight while eyeing Breeze as she added four sugar packets and so much milk that she turned it pale. 

"What?" Breeze asked.

"You've been working at CSI for how long and you still haven't eighty-sixed the extras in the coffee?"

"Can't stand that bitter taste. Need something sweet."

__

She really is a hummingbird, Marlena smiled to herself. 

"So what's the deal going down?" Breeze asked. That silver ring glimmered even in the dimness of the room. She picked up a napkin and spit her gum into it. 

"I'm meeting with Doctor Orestes in ten minutes. I can fill you in and Sasha…"

"Can be filled in now, too," came the arrogant voice of Sasha Zarek. Despite his feminine name, there was nothing dainty or girlish about Sasha. His sandy brown hair was a mess of curls that reached the base of his neck and his eyes were the color of steel, "to match my backbone," as he often joked. Over six feet tall, Sasha towered over almost everyone in the bureau but no one was intimidated by him. "What's going on, ladies?" Sasha leaned up against the doorframe, crossing his arms over his chest, a coy smirk on his face. He wore black slacks and a dark crimson shirt. "I hear I'm re-assigned to the Grissom case?"

"Yes," Marlena said dryly. "You're replacing Nick Stokes."

"Is Nick okay with that?"

"I don't care. I just don't want Grissom's former team taking part in the investigation, is all. Why does no one think this is a good idea? They _should_ be regarded as suspects."

"Except Sara Sidle," Breeze murmured. "She was with you from the second you guys got the call, wasn't she?"

"Yeah," Sasha said. "I saw you two in Sidle's office chitchatting. Was gonna come in and interrupt when you guys got the call."

"And Nick Stokes wasn't there yet. As for Catherine Willows and Warrick Brown…I can't remember where they were."

"Why are you focusing on only Grissom's team, Marlena?" 

Marlena suddenly felt like a target, "It's just a hunch, you guys. I'm calling in Solange Tanguy too."

"Who?"

Breeze jumped in, "Gil Grissom's cleaning lady, right?"

"Yes," Marlena nodded. "I found several long, dark hairs in Grissom's bed. His hair is short and, what you men would call when you're trying to sound worldly, salt-and-pepper. Solange Tanguy's hair is long and dark."

Sasha's jaw practically hit the floor, "Are you sayin'--"

Breeze interjected again, "She's not saying _anything_, Sasha. For all we know, the hairs could have fallen out while cleaning, right, Marlena?"

Marlena opened her mouth and closed it again like a fish out of water. She took another sip of coffee as her mind flashed back to the night before. "The bed was unmade," she said finally. "And it was nighttime. What would a maid be doing at her client's house at nighttime?"

Breeze was silent in thought and then Sasha jumped in:

"Grissom takes a roll in the hay with Mrs. Clean and then she whacks him?"

"Must you be so _vulgar_?" Breeze shot fireballs at Sasha with her eyes. "Besides, Catherine told me that one time, Grissom told her that it's a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts."

Before Sasha could open his mouth again, Marlena jumped in, "That's another thing--I don't think she really…_whacked_ him. Let's be professional about this. Listen, Sasha, one of these days you're going to break your neck jumping to conclusions. The hairs might not be Solange's. How could they be if the bed was unmade? She _is_ the maid. For all we know, Grissom had a girlfriend he never told anyone about. He was a private man from what I understand. I mean, I _did _find some lipstick on a glass. The only thing I know is that it seems as if he died by asphyxia. There were no external lacerations anywhere, I found no blood anywhere near the body--"

"But you did find blood?" Sasha raised an eyebrow. This boy was always hungry for action.

"Irrelevant blood spots…three of them, so miniscule it's uncanny to think of how it could matter. One on his razor, one on the tip of a knife and one beside some pieces of broken porcelain."

"They do sound irrelevant," Breeze said.

"When you're in our line of work," Sasha smirked, "nothing's irrelevant."

On her way to the coroner's office, Marlena heard footsteps close behind her. She turned and came nose-to-chest with Nick Stokes, the strapping young Texan that Marlena used to have a massive crush on when she first joined the bureau. His chiseled features and broad smile were the epicenter of his good looks. Marlena will never forget and rue the day she found out he was married.

She groaned silently and prepared for the worst as she looked into Nick's eyes an asked sardonically, annoyed that he had stalked her, "Can I _help _you?"

"You can tell me why Sasha Zarek is taking my place," Nick snapped. "What the _hell_ do you think you're doing, Marlena? You're a rookie." 

Marlena winced. She hated that word. "I may be a rookie," she spat, "but I know _exactly_ what I'm doing."

"I don't think you do," Nick retorted. 

"_Sara _must."

"What does _Sara_ have to do with this?"

"She's the one who got Catherine to let me lead my own team."

Nick's face hardened into a scowl, "I knew Grissom better than you _or_ Sasha _or_ Breeze. I'd be an _asset_. Not to mention I have seniority over the three of you!"

"One more word and you'll be a _suspect_. I'm replacing you for the same reason I replaced Sara."

"_Sara_? _Sara_? Again, _what_ does _she_ have to do with this?"

"Ask her. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a date with a coroner." She tried to turn around but Nick stepped in her way. She was ready to push him to the floor and walk on him.

"Marlena," he said softly. He stepped close to her, gently put his hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes, his hard expression gone, his voice gentler, a tone Marlena never heard in him before. Marlena felt her heart flutter. "I'd like to everything I can to help."

Marlena blinked and gave him a hard stare in answer to his softhearted gaze, "You want to help? Butt out."

Doctor Benedict Orestes never thought he'd live to see the day that he'd have to do an autopsy on Gil Grissom. When the body was first brought in, he thought it was a joke that everyone but he was in on. Once everyone was gone and he was left alone with the body, he half expected Gil to jump up and snap,

"What the hell are you staring at, Ben? Did you really think I was dead? Get back to work," and stalk out as if nothing was the matter.

It pained Orestes to make the first incision into the man's chest.

He worked in silence on the autopsy, writing his notes without so much as a whistle escape his lips, as he usually did. He always had the radio tuned to the Hits of the 80's station and knew Gil couldn't stand that "new-wave techno pop shit" so, in memorandum, welcomed the quiet as he examined the body. He was halfway through with the examination when he had a visitor. 

"Evenin', Ben," Marlena Reagan greeted the good coroner with a small smile--something Orestes rarely saw around CSI.

"Hey, Marlena," Orestes flashed a short-lived smile. "Rough night?"

"You have no idea," Marlena tugged on some gloves and some blue scrubs as she approached the examination table. "Why is there a towel over his eyes?"

Orestes winced, "Oh, that. I forgot about that." He removed the towel and forced himself to look into the deceased's face. He'd autopsied on many, many bodies but this was definitely new territory for him.

"Whaddaya got for me?" Marlena asked, shaking her too-long bangs out of her face. She realized that ever since she started this job it seemed like forever since she had a decent haircut.

"A whole lot of stuff, that's what. I've got your evidence up the wah-zoo. Where to start?"

Marlena gave the doctor a look that stated the obvious, "At the beginning, of course."

Orestes nodded, "Of course. Well, before I give you real evidence, there's the obvious. Time of death was hard to tell, since he was already in rigor mortis when they brought him in--estimated between seven and ten PM. Also, in case you didn't know: Gil Grissom was afflicted with autosclerosis, a bone buildup in the inner ear."

"I did know that. Detective Browning told me at the scene."

"It's a genetic disease, from what I hear--no pun intended. Grissom's mother suffered from it as well."

Marlena nodded, tilting her head. "He taught entomology at the deaf university around here."

"Yes. Fluent in American sign language, obviously, since his mother was deaf. I saw that his hands were very well taken care of," Orestes held up one of Grissom's limp hands. Marlena saw that the skin was soft and the fingernails gleamed as if regularly manicured but she couldn't picture Grissom at a nail salon. "Over the years I've noticed that a lot of people who use sign language on a regular basis take excellent care of their hands, since it's what people tend to look at when they use it."

"Unless you're a lip reader, like Grissom."

"Well, Grissom could read lips, yes, but not everyone can. Hands do the talking, as they say."

"Wonder who did his nails? I'd like to get their number," Marlena muttered to herself. "Okay, so his hands are nice. Great. What can you give me evidence-wise?"

"There's the dilated pupils, evidently. That was probably the first thing you noticed, right?"

"Besides the blue tinge," Marlena shrugged. 

"Well, here's something else." Orestes went to Grissom's mouth and pulled the lips apart. "His teeth are clenched, lock-jaw style. The inside of his cheeks are bitten deep and hard. I found blood in his throat, noting that he might have swallowed some as he bit his cheeks. There are small nail marks in his palms and blood under his fingernails, probably from clenching his hands due to convulsions. Put that together with the pupils…"

Marlena paused, musing and her mind raced, "Tetanus?"

"To the untrained eye and without expensive objects of cadaver torture like so, yes. _But_, like you observed, there are no external wounds that could lead to cause of death. Even the young'uns know that tetanus comes from a puncture wound or a scratch from a sharp rusted object. _But,_ I have the trained eye and the equipment to boot."

"What did the trained eye find?"

"I found some deep scratches on his forearms. I can tell you they're not self inflicted. They're too low."

"He could have scratched with the other arm."

"No, look at the marks. See how they're running down?" he pointed and placed his fingers at the top of marking. "This line is low enough to be the pinkie, this one tall enough to be the middle finger." He mocked the scratch, lightly running his gloved fingertips down his arm. "When the scratches end, they end evenly."

"Oh," Marlena was tempted to scratch her own arm to compare and contrast.

"Plus, if they were self-inflicted, I don't think he would have done it this unmercifully. He put up a fight with somebody. A tough one too. The scratches were so raw they were almost to the point of bleeding. See the tiny scab wounds?" Orestes pointed and Marlena leaned in and nodded. "See also the bruise on the forehead, possibly from hitting the wood floor face-first. But that's postmortem."

Marlena screwed up her tiny rosebud mouth in thought. "Anything leading to cause of death?"

"Asphyxiation as far as I can tell," Orestes sighed. "There were tiny little hemorrhages on his lungs. It's correlated with asphyxiation."

"That's not the official cause of death is it?" Marlena asked, worried.

"There's really no other explanation," Orestes insisted, cleaning some of his instruments. "Oh I almost forgot. I pulled these from the stomach lining." Orestes led Marlena to his microscope. 

She peered in and saw sort of large, white dots. "What _is _that?"

"I'm not totally sure. Could be some cause of death. I'll have the stomach contents in storage for you, in case you need it later. But then again, I'm just the coroner. I slice-and-dice, you put it back together."

Marlena shot him a grin, "Doc Robbins would be proud of you."


	3. The Incident

On her way to Greg's lab from the coroner's, Marlena stopped by Sara's to check up on her, but not before she stopped for a Vanilla Coke in the break room.

Instead of hunched over her computer as usual, she found Sara on the phone in her office, so Marlena leaned against the doorway until Sara acknowledged her presence. She tried not to eavesdrop on Sara's end of the conversation but she couldn't help it.

"…No, I think it would be better if I _don't_ see you again," Sara was saying. "Remember last time we saw each other? We nearly had a fistfight in the parking lot. That's not something I want to relive again…Okay, _you_ can pick her up at _daycare_ if you'd like but I'd prefer to _not _have you in my home. I'm sorry, Sean, there's nothing more I have to say on the issue…No!" here, Sara noticed Marlena in the doorway and gave her a little nod. "…Listen you worthless piece of—no, don't tell _me_ to shut up…Listen, Sean, you caught me at work. I have a _ton_ of paperwork to get through…No. We can bitch at each other when I get home…I _know_…No. No. Yes. No…Okay, 'bye! 'Bye!" Sara slammed the phone down in frustration and blew some stray strands of hair from her face. "Sorry about that, Marlena. What can I do for you?" she asked as she displayed her prizewinning smile. 

"Just wanted to see if you were okay," Marlena said softly.

Sara flicked more of her hair off her face and turned to Marlena, who noticed the red rims around her eyes from crying. Sara rubbed her forehead with her hand, "It's a hard image to get out of your head, you know?"

"Yes." 

"Especially when it's someone you feel…strongly for," Sara sighed and took a swig of coffee from a nearby mug. "Come on in, have a seat, save me from my misery."

"What about your paperwork?" Marlena grinned, glancing at Sara's nearly-empty desk, neat for once. 

Sara gave a light giggle, "That was just to get my asshole ex Sean off the phone."

Marlena offered Sara a brighter smile and pulled up a chair beside the desk. She saw an array of framed photos on the desktop, in frames of all shapes, sizes and colors. Most of them featured Sara's daughter, a pretty little thing. Marlena had seen pictures of her before, but never studied them. Her hair was Sara's dark chestnut but it was curled like Shirley Temple and from the photos she observed that her eyes were a very clear and pristine blue.

"Your daughter's gorgeous. How old is she now?"

"Thank you," Sara smiled. "She'll be five in November."

"What's her name again?" Marlena asked, her eyes wandering to a picture of Sara and her girl in front of some structure or building. Sara was on her knees, her arms around her child, who stood straight and flashed a toothy grin at whoever was behind the camera. 

"Evie," Sara replied between sips of coffee. "Short for Evelyn Christine Sidle."

"She has your name?"

"Yeah. I didn't think it was necessary to keep my husband's name—Gentileschi—when he walked out so when I changed back, so did she," Sara fingered the faux wood finish on another photo of Evie as an infant. It looked like a studio portrait. "When Sean left, I sold all the stuff he left behind—even his Alfa Romeo."

"He left his Alfa Romeo?" Marlena's eyes nearly bugged out of her head. She remembered that she would have _killed_ for an Alfa Romeo at one time. She sipped her Coke and waited for Sara's answer, who paused before giving a response and noticed not one picture on Sara's desk contained even the slightest image of Sean, not even a wedding photo was evident.

"If I know Sean, he probably has a new car, _twice_ the cost of the Alfa Romeo."

"You should have kept it."

"Nah. I don't have a use for such a flashy car," Sara crinkled her button nose. "I go to and from work, take Evie to and from daycare and go to and from the supermarket. I just don't see a legit reason. I used the money from selling the Alfa Romeo to buy new clothes for Evie."

"Her dad doesn't send money?" 

Sara almost laughed, "Nope. He can rot in hell. I frankly don't care what he does and what he doesn't. Evie and I are two independent women—we'll be fine."

Marlena smiled. "Well, as long as I'm assured—I better get to Greg's. He's getting my tox screen back soon." She took one last secret glance at a picture of Evie and started towards the door.

"Okay. And Marlena?"

"Yes?" She turned.

Sara flashed her cute little gap-toothed smile, "Thanks."

Greg Sanders tipped back in his office chair, put his feet up on the desk and nodded his head to his punk rock mix CD that he'd made only last night. Like every other night, he had to remind himself to stop putting his feet on the desk or he'd get a bawling out from Grissom. But unlike every other night, Greg had to remind himself that Grissom was gone. 

The wound was still fresh, and working in and around CSI, he knew all about wounds. Some healed, some left scars. This particular one would leave a scar and everyone knew it. 

He felt slight pity for Marlena Reagan, the "new girl". She had entered CSI in a tough situation and joined Grissom's team and just when she was gaining not only his respect but the respect of others, she has to investigate his death. Although, Greg thought she was doing a great job. He kind of liked to watch her walking up and down the halls of HQ, trailing after Sara Sidle and Catherine Willows like they were goddesses or just hanging out with Breeze Hamelin. There was something sexy about her that Greg couldn't pinpoint. She didn't have haunting, exotic eyes like Breeze or a prizewinning smile like Sara but Marlena just had an air of sophistication and worldliness encircling her. She oozed the tough-Goth-girl powerhouse sex appeal, with her dirty-blonde hair always tousled like Glenn Close in _Fatal Attraction_.

Coincidentally, just as he was daydreaming—or, _thinking _about her, Marlena meandered on into his lab. 

"Hey, is that…Social Distortion?" Marlena cocked her head, listening to the music coming out of Greg's small stereo. 

"Yeah," Greg sat up in his chair and grinned. "You know them?"

"A little. So, do you have my tox screens?"

"Um," Greg lowered his stereo and shuffled through a pile of papers on his desk, as disorganized as Sara. "Somewhere in here…sorry."

"Take your time."

"Found it," Greg withdrew a few sheets of paper held together with a single brad. "Okay, Grissom, apparently, was a firm believer in herbal remedies, as you know. I'm in the course of processing the pills you took from his home."

"Uh-huh…You don't think he overdosed, do you?"

"That's not my job to think. But between you and me, no. It's not really possible to overdose on herbal remedies but he overdosed on something…and here it is," Greg handed the tox screen report to Marlena and put his hands behind his head.

Marlena read the report and her eyes bugged, "Strychnine?"

"Yup."

"As in, the poison?"

"Yup."

"Strychnine."

"Strychnine. An alkaloid extract obtained from the seeds of _Strychnos nux vomica_, a small tree of the East Indies, formerly been used as an antiseptic, stomach tonic, circulatory stimulant, central nervous system stimulant, and as a medication for the relief of constipation. However, I _doubt_ it's the reason why Grissom had it in his system. Strychnine's still in _limited_ use today as a bird, mammal, and insect control agent." He smiled to himself with mild accomplishment. 

"It's fatal to birds?"

"Birds and _mammals_. Humans are mammals."

"That they are. Mercifully," Marlena mumbled. She read the list of the other pharmaceuticals that Greg found in Grissom's system, "Pycnogenol, vitamin B12, Tylenol 3, Pau d'arco, wood betony, bayberry, Echinacea, valerian root, Genetian root, Ho Shu Wu, kelp and gingko biloba. I almost feel sorry for the man. Who really has such a strong believe that they take a_ dozen_ of these pills?"

Greg shrugged, "I try to keep away from the herbal stuff. The only two things that I found that weren't natural were the Tylenol 3 and the strychnine."

"Tylenol 3?"

"A mix of Tylenol and codeine. It's powerful stuff. Sometimes it's given to certain cancer patients."

"Grissom didn't have cancer, so that's out. What's all this stuff _for_? That's what I don't understand."

"Various things," Greg took back the report and ticked off an impressive list of uses for these remedies, "As a sleeping aid, for pain reduction, improving circulation, memory and eyesight, maintaining healthy nerve cells and red blood cells, strengthening the immune system and digestive track, preventing strokes, aiding resistance to bruising, helping joint flexibility and migraine headaches, detoxifying the blood, nourishing the skeletal system, burning calories, and, everybody's favorite, retarding the aging process."

"Wow," Marlena expressed after a pause. "You really did your homework."

"It's what I do. In high school I was the kid that other kids paid to write essays for them."

Marlena gave a knowing nod. Her brother did that, too. She looked again at the list of pills. "He really needed all that?"

"I don't think he _needed _it," Greg said, handing back the report. "But it helps. Grissom _was_ getting up in his numbers. I'm surprised he didn't take anything for his hearing disorder. Maybe because it's a genetic disease."

Out of nervous habit, Marlena screwed up her mouth and chewed on her lip. Greg couldn't help but stare.

"I don't really know what to make of this," Marlena blew her bangs from her face and plopped into a chair next to Greg, whose heart fluttered a little. Marlena sat cross-legged, stared at the tox report blankly like a math test she hadn't studied for and toyed with the beaded anklet around her left leg.

"Greg."

The deep voice of Warrick Brown interrupted the quiet solace in which Marlena had almost escaped into albeit Social Distortion was still blaring from Greg's stereo. She was rather enjoying it.

"Greg, do you have my DNA results?" Warrick asked, almost shouting.

"Um," Greg lowered the volume once again rummaged through his papers. "Think so…where'd I…Oh…Marlena, could you move your chair just a little to the right?"

Confused, Marlena slid to the right as Greg asked and he bent down and tugged a slip of paper that had somehow managed to escape the torrents of Greg's desk and fluttered to the floor. Marlena had moved the chair over it. 

"Got it," Greg held up the paper triumphantly and Warrick ripped it from his hand so fast, Marlena winced as if she'd just gotten a paper cut and not Greg. 

"How're you doin', Marlena?" Warrick asked while skimming the sheet.

"I get by," she answered flatly as she fiddled with her bangs, once again thinking they needed to be cut. "It's been tough so far but it's been barely twenty-four hours."

"I know how that is."

"How's Merilee?" Marlena asked innocently, referring to Warrick's wife, a beautiful woman who was a former botanist with a fondness for painting and sculpting. She had switched careers after she and Warrick had their last child nearly three years ago.

"She's great, thanks. Working on four projects at once," Warrick flashed a subtle smile underneath his goatee, "as usual."

"How are _you_?"

Pausing to yawn, Warrick replied, "Tired but working through the pain. Trying to keep my mind off the…you know, the…the incident."

_Is that how they referred to the death of their supervisor? The _incident_? _To Marlena it seemed a little…void, maybe? All of a sudden she felt like she had to get some air, like she did when she became nervous or uncomfortable.

"Thanks Greg," Marlena sighed with a grin, patting his hand kindly.

"Um," Greg swallowed hard and returned Marlena's smile. "You're welcome."


	4. Identification

Marlena left the lab in a hurry and escaped to the ladies room where she quickly dug into her pocket and withdrew a lighter and the last cigarette of her pack. She'd been smoking secretly for at least twelve years—not even her parents knew. And she was very good at_ keeping_ it a secret. 

Quietly, she hopped onto the radiator and pulled open the window. The night was chilly and the desert brought in a zephyr. She shivered a little. 

__

I'm going to quit smoking tomorrow, she told herself, something she'd say every time she lit up. It was her inside joke with herself.

It wasn't until she was just about finished with the cigarette that she noticed the tox screening was still in her hand. She groaned and read it again. Strychnine. She didn't recall seeing any strychnine at all in Grissom's cabinets. So the strychnine came from an outside source. 

__

But where?

The maid could have brought it in with her.

__

But how?

Marlena felt very tired. She finished her cigarette, doused it in the sink and chucked the stub out of the window, wondering if she'd made the wrong career choice.

She exited the bathroom and sort of flapped the hem of her T-shirt, trying to get the smell of cigarette smoke out. Just then, Catherine Willows stalked down the hallway. If looks could kill, Marlena would be dead already. 

"Marlena, no smoking in the bathrooms please," she said as she passed, and kept walking.

Inconspicuously, Marlena put her nose to the hem and sniffed. It _sort of_ smelled like smoke, but not overwhelmingly. She spent the rest of the night trying to figure out how Catherine had managed to smell that.

Going into her locker, she changed T-shirts just in case anyone else got a conniption from the slightest scent of tobacco and/or smoke. Next, she sought out Breeze who Marlena had put to work matching the fingerprints found in Grissom's apartment.

"Where's Sasha?" she asked her. 

"I don't know. Why do I smell smoke?" Breeze asked, sniffling.

"I've been smokin' in the girl's room. But never again. Is it in my hair?"

"Uh-huh." Breeze yawned and rubbed her eyes. Just as they focused, the computer came up with a match. "Whoa." She stared at the blinking screen. 

"What?" 

"You're gonna wanna see this," Breeze shook her head.

Marlena came up behind her to peer over her shoulder at the computer screen. "What?"

"Well, these fingerprints from the table, chair, a wine glass and every bottle of the meds were from Grissom," Breeze said, showing Marlena the prints. "These are from the door, a vase, two bottles of the medications, the table and the chair and some of the drinking glasses belonging to Solange Tanguy." Another example was shown. "Here's where it gets interesting. _These_ were on the door, the table, the chair, a wine glass and _four_ bottles of Grissom's herbals. They belong to Heather Jeanne Paruvski, also known as Lady Heather."

"Lady Heather? That sounds familiar."

"It should. She runs Lady Heather's Domain, a website and a…well, some would say whorehouse, in Las Vegas. Lady Heather was involved in two CSI cases in two years, both dealing with deaths of her employees."

"So it puts her at the scene of the crime."

"Well, yes. I think we might have to have a talk to her."

Marlena wrapped a piece of her hair around her index finger and tugged on it a little. "What else is there that I should know?"

"This," Breeze pulled up the last print. "This was on a few cabinets, a chair and the door knob and also every bottle of Grissom's herbals. Check it out." Breeze pulled up the print. 

What Marlena saw made her blood run cold. She looked in surprise at the fingerprints Breeze had matched. "That's not…are you sure?"

"Yup. AVIS never lies, does it?" 

"Well," Marlena couldn't help but shake her head as well. "Looks like we have a suspect in our own midst."

"What do you wanna do about it?"

"I'm not sure yet," Marlena sighed. She began to pace and bite her thumbnail. "What would Sara Sidle be doing at Grissom's place?"

"Were they friends?" 

"Coworkers first, friends second. That's what Sara tells me all the time."

"I also sent the hairs you found to Sasha for him to analyze. He should be doing that now but I haven't seen him in a while."

"If that's Sara's hair, I'll seriously loose it. I'll go crazy." 

"I got a good look at them under a light before I sent them to Sasha. Some are dark red. Some are black. Sara, if I'm not mistaken, is a brunette."

"But we can't get DNA from hair unless it's pulled from the roots. We might not have given Sasha enough information."

"Get a sample of Sara's hair and compare-and-contrast."

"Yeah, like it's that easy. I'll have to get samples from Heather and Solange, too."

Breeze raised her pierced eyebrow again, "Sounds like you're finally getting a hang of this job."

"Sash?" Marlena said when she found him at a table in the break room looking over some paperwork. "I need you to come with me to Solange Tanguy's house."

Sasha looked up, "You mean, Mrs. Clean?"

"Yeah, whatever thrills you," Marlena rolled her eyes and sat down across from him. "I need your fiber analyzing talents."

"I am at your disposal," Sasha smirked. 

"Sure," another roll of the eyes made Sasha back off. "Sash, I think something on Solange might have brought the strychnine into Grissom's house."

"He lick her clothes or something?"

"She's the cleaning lady. She uses and has access to _all types _of chemicals. Please, Sasha…"

"Marlena, they found the strychnine _in his blood_. It was a _tox screen_!"

"It couldn't hurt to look, Sasha. She _found_ the body. She could have _something_ connected with the murder. Footprints, fingerprints put her at the scene of the crime."

"Did you _find_ her footprints or fingerprints?" 

"Yes and I think hair, too."

Sasha groaned and stood up, "I'll go check out where she lives."

Marlena knocked on the door of Solange Tanguy's current residence, apartment 62B of the Egyptian Gardens Complex, the aqua paint of the entrance peeling badly. As they waited for an answer, Sasha looked around, up and down the corridor, listening to the sounds coming through the paper-thin walls. The hall was like an oven. Today was not a good day to be wearing long pants, like both Marlena and Sasha were. 

Finally, a thin woman wearing a flowing, silky yellow muumuu answered the door, but it was not Solange. But like Solange, her skin was onyx and her eyes and dread locked hair matched. She was smoking a long, thin cigarette that gave off the faint scent of vanilla. 

"Can I help you?" she asked in English with a thick Trinidadian accent that reminded Marlena of jumpy ands festive music. Her tone, however, was grave.

Sasha flashed his ID, "Sasha Zarek and Marlena Reagan from the Las Vegas Criminalistics Bureau. We have a warrant to search your residence for evidence in a homicide." 

Marlena held up the warrant and her ID at the same time, a little awkwardly. 

"Dis about Solange?" the woman leaned one arm on her doorway. "Dis about de man who died?"

"Yes."

"Come in, den," the woman opened her door a bit wider and beckoned them to enter.


	5. Mrs Clean

"Who might you be?" Marlena asked, stepping inside the small apartment which was as hot as the hallway yet little relief was provided by the two large fans gyrating in two separate corners of the living room in which they were standing. Three young children with skin like Isabeau's that were once engrossed with the small television in front of them but were now fixated on the strange officers in their home.

The woman closed the door behind her, "I am Isabeau Baudier, Solange's olda sister. Olda if not wisa."

"Where is Solange?" 

"She be in her bedroom. Po' thing is shakin' up bad, findin' her boss-man like dat," Isabeau took a puff of her cigarette. "She be cryin', frettin', thinkin' you cops gon' take her away from her little boy."

"Little boy?"

Isabeau's eyes widened, "Oh, I bet you don' know. Solange is a widow, her husband drown not long ago back in Trinidad. Po' man was knocked off his boat. Armand is with Holy God now," here Isabeau paused to cross herself quickly, "and left Solange with his son to raise, Rémi. Solange, she is not a very strong woman, she needs all de help she can get. So she come to live wit me and Julien, dat is my husband. I tell her, 'we have a little bedroom off our kitchen that you and Rémi can share.' So she come live wit us. I got her dat job, you know, at de Quall Agency. I used to work deah myself before I had my last baby."

"Why didn't you return?" Sasha asked.

"Oh, I just neva picked it back up. I am de house-wife now. My children are seven, five and three. De babies need care. Oh, speakin' of de babies, little Rémi is but two years old. I'll have to ask you not to upset him."

"No intention to, ma'am," Sasha promised. "We just need to talk to Solange briefly."

"I'll go get her," Isabeau assured them. She turned to her children, "And whatcha lookin' at, huh? I pay good money for dat TV set and if you gonna watch it, watch _it_! It's not nice to stare!" The children quickly returned to the TV set. Isabeau flashed a smirk at Marlena and Sasha. "My children. Don' let dem bother you too much. I go get my sista now. Have a seat in de kitchen."

Marlena and Sasha followed Isabeau into the kitchen and sat down while Isabeau disappeared into a plain oak door that one would most likely mistake for a pantry or broom closet.

The voices were muffled but to Marlena it sounded like they were speaking French. Then a long, agitated wail sounded. The children seemed unfazed by the noise but it scared Marlena half to death. 

"What the hell was that?" Sasha whispered. 

"I don't know."

It was quiet for a little bit. The oldest of Isabeau's children, a girl with cornrows and pouty lips wandered into the kitchen.

"Who are you?" she asked innocently.

"We're investigators," Marlena explained gently. 

"Is that like a detective? Like Dick Tracy?" 

Marlena smiled, "Sort of."

"Can I see your badge?"

Enamored by the child's curiosity, Marlena showed her the ID. The girl cocked her head and smiled.

"That's neat."

"What's your name?" 

"Anaïs."

"How old are you, Anaïs?"

"Seven…is my _tante_ in trouble?"

"Not yet," mumbled Sasha, inaudible enough for Anaïs to hear but enough to make Marlena kick him under the table.

"Of course not," Marlena soothed the child's worries.

At this time, Isabeau emerged with Solange, who was cuddling a toddler--obviously Rémi, her son. 

"Solange, _partir _Rémi _avec _Anaïs_ donc nous pouvons parler à ces gens_," Isabeau said, patting her sister on the shoulder. "I'll be right back," Isabeau said softly to Marlena and Sasha, taking Rémi from his mother and into the living room. "Anaïs, take Rémi…"

Solange sat at the kitchen table, wringing her hands, biting her lip. Her hair was tousled and she was wearing a worn pale yellow robe. Her feet were bare.

When Isabeau sat back down again, she stubbed her cigarette out and folded her hands. "Well, how can we help you?"

Marlena didn't know how to begin and turned to Sasha for help. 

"Solange, I'm sure, knows of the case," Sasha said. "We found her fingerprints at the scene of the crime."

"Fin-ger-prints, _oui_," Solange nodded. "Ep-pe-thee-lee-als."

"Yes. Epithelials," Marlena said, also nodding. She turned to Isabeau, "We also found Solange's fingerprints on two bottles of the deceased man's medication. Now, the man—Gil Grissom—was poisoned via strychnine. Internally. We need your permission to search your house for strychnine. Since this is a crucial part to the investigation, we also have a warrant, should you refuse."

"Strychnine?" Solange said. "Isabeau!" 

Isabeau looked at her sister in surprise. "Solange, _quel est le problème avec vous_?"

"_Dans le coffret, il est là, _Isabeau!"

"Is she okay?" Sasha asked Isabeau in a whisper. 

"I don' know," Isabeau shook her head, looking scared. A child, a little boy, came to the door way of the kitchen just as Solange began to wail.

"Mere, is _Tante_ alright?"

"Go back into the living room, Luc," Isabeau said harshly, putting her arms around Solange. "Please. And close the door behind you!"

Luc sadly hung his head and closed a sliding door that came out of the wall, to close the kitchen off from the rest of the house.

"_Mon Dieu, que j'ai fait? Économiser moi, Dieu! Économiser moi! Gardez-moi coffre-fort, Armand! Maintenez-moi sûr!" _Solange moaned. 

"Mrs. Baudier, is she going to be okay?" Sasha asked again. 

Before Isabeau could answer, Solange got up out of her chair and went to a cabinet under the sink.

"Solange, _que recherchez-vous_?" Isabeau turned around to stare at her sister, who was rummaging around underneath the sink. 

"_Je l'ai trouvé!_" Solange exclaimed. She pulled a baggie out from underneath the sink and tossed it onto the kitchen table with a look of disdain on her face. She spat on the baggie. "_Prenez-le. Je ne le veux pas._"

"What's this?" Marlena held up the baggie to get a better look.

Sasha pulled a pair latex gloves from his field kit and pulled them on before opening the baggie. "Cocaine?"

Marlena pulled out gloves over her own and dipped into the baggie as Sasha held it open. She sifted it between her fingers. It was fine and smooth, like powdered sugar. Cocaine, she had observed in the past, tended to be more grainy like salt. 

"_Voici votre arme_," spat Solange again. She turned away from the people at the table, biting her lips. 

"What did she say?" Marlena asked Isabeau.

Isabeau gave a shuddery sigh. "She say, 'here is your weapon'."

"It's strychnine."

"It be strychnine," Isabeau nodded. "It is not Solange's."

"Who's is it?"

"Mine," Isabeau revealed. "I use it often." 

Information Greg had given her hours ago popped back into her head. " For gardening, by any chance?" 

Nodding, Isabeau continued. "I keep it secret. I do not know if it is considered inhumane but back in Trinidad, I used it in my garden always. It kept de bugs away. De rodents in de ground, dey did not nibble on de stalks. It does good work."

"Solange, listen very carefully," Marlena spoke clearly and evenly, dipping her head a little to make eye contact with the young maid, who was looking at her lap. "Solange…please tell me…did you come into contact with the strychnine the night your employer died?"

Isabeau repeated the question in French to her sister.

Sadly, Solange answered, "_Je ne peux pas dire, je ne peux pas se rappeler._"

Marlena looked at Isabeau, who translated, "She says she does not remember."

"Please try to remember, Solange." 

"_Soeur douce, essai à se rappeler pour votre enfant,_" Isabeau pressed. "_Sil vous plait_." 

Solange was silent. Sasha fidgeted and Marlena gently crushed his toes with the hell of her boot to keep him still. Waiting was not his favorite part of the game. 

"Solange," Isabeau pressed. She whispered something into her sister's ear and gave her a pinch on the arm, at which Solange gave a tiny cry. Slowly, she began to speak, in English.

"I did touch strychnine," she said slowly. "I sprinkle over Isabeau's garden before I leave to clean house. I go late."

"What?" Sasha whispered to Marlena, confused.

"So you cleaned house for Mister Grissom at night?" Marlena asked Solange.

"Yes. He teach night class."

"Oh," Marlena nodded. "He taught night classes at the college?"

"Yes. College. Yes. Sometimes. He call, he ask and tell when I come."

"I'm confused," Sasha said. "He would call and _tell _you when to come over and clean? Does it work like that?"

"Sometimes," Isabeau jumped in. "I do know Mista Grissom preferred to not be home when we come to clean. He liked it to be done when he was not home. But he call at de agency and de agency relay de message here where Solange gets it."

"Was he supposed to teach a night class the night he died, Solange?" Marlena asked.

Solange nodded. 

"So that's why you found the body," Marlena said to herself. Louder, she continued, "You went over to Mister Grissom's house because he had asked you to come over at night while he was teaching. But he had died between the time he called the Quall Agency and the time you got there, which had to be between seven and ten PM. Coronary reports give us an estimated time of death."

"Go on, Miss Tanguy," Sasha said. "What else about the strychnine?"

"I wash my hands before I go to work," Solange said, "because…I touch my _bébé_, give him kiss good-bye."

"So you washed your hands so you could kiss Rémi?"

"_Oui._"

"_Je ne suis pas une mauvaise personne, n'est-ce pas?_" Solange asked her sister.

"_Non, soeur de bébé, parce que ce n'est pas votre défaut_," Isabeau reassured.

"Mrs. Baudier," Sasha said, who was beginning to feel a bit uncomfortable, "could you ask Solange if she washed her clothes from last night? We _do_ have a warrant for them to test for the presence of strychnine." 

"I know she didn't," Isabeau said. "I do her laundry. It is still in her bedroom. Solange, go get your clothes."

Like an obedient child, Solange solemnly got up from her chair and opened the door to her bedroom that Marlena had mistaken for a pantry. Solange entered and emerged in less than a minute. The familiar turquoise dress was in a heap. She somehow knew enough to bring her white tennis shoes as well, which were underneath the dress.

"Solange," Marlena said. "We also need your purse from last night. Don't empty it, please."

"Will I get back?"

"Of course."

She went back to get the worn hemp purse about which Isabeau later bragged that Solange had made with her own two hands back in Trinidad. 

Marlena put the clothes, shoes and purse in a plastic bag and sealed it and had Sasha do the same to the strychnine. "And one last thing—could you show us where you use the strychnine?"

"Of course," Isabeau said. She went over to the sink and opened the window over it to reveal a window box sitting outside. It was a little less than three feet long and overflowed with colorful blossoms. "Now you be thinkin', 'tis a window box. Why she need de poison for de rodents? Well, mista, I got news. De rats. We get rats and mice like you would not believe. Dey de ones nibblin' de stalks. It drives me crazy."

Sasha rose and went over to the window box and leaned out. In gloved hands, he inconspicuously plucked off a few leaves and petals. 

"What flowers are these?" Sasha asked Isabeau as he pulled his head back into 

Isabeau stuck her chin out, "Birds of Paradise. My husband and I both love dem. Dey were my wedding bouquet. And dose are de Gerber daises. I brought all these seeds here in my suitcase from my hometown. Beautiful, aren't dey? De colors are wonderful, make you feel alive."

"Well, in Mr. Grissom's case," Sasha sighed. "I don't know about that."


	6. A ShoeIn

Before Marlena and Sasha went to Solange Tanguy's house, Breeze was ordered to match up the shoeprints found in Grissom's apartment and match them with a brand and size and, hopefully, a suspect. 

One was a delicately-sized high-heeled shoe and hoped to match it to "Lady" Heather Jeanne Paruvski. Another looked like a tennis shoe, a very narrow five or six. Several were large men's prints and figured that they were Grissom's.

__

But we won't know until we check, Breeze thought to herself.

She scanned the prints and looked them up in the shoeprint database. The high-heeled shoe was hard to match--there were so many she had to sort through but finally matched them to a pair of Steve Madden boots, a size seven. Victorian style ankle books with eye-and-hooks instead of laces were definitely the style of a Las Vegas dominatrix, or so she figured.

The tennis shoe matched several prints, since it was a simple design, but Breeze finally pulled up Keds and made a match. Marlena had told her that the maid was wearing white tennis shoes. 

__

One of the last prints Breeze matched was a unique sort of boot. She had trouble matching it first because the print was worn and second because it was extremely rare. They were almost combat/hiking style, a man's size ten. They were a very exclusive Italian-made brand, called Aquilas, and cost about three hundred and fifty dollars a pair. 

__

Could these be Grissom's?

Grissom never struck Breeze as an extravagant man who cared to spend money on nearly four-hundred dollar boots. 

On a hunch, Breeze went on the Internet on the computer nearby and looked up Aquila boots. Unfortunately the only website she found devoted to Aquila boots was the official site and completely in Italian. 

__

Who do I know that speaks Italian?

After racking her brain for longer than she should have, she decided to ask around randomly, starting with Catherine Willows, who might know someone else who did.

"Catherine?" Breeze breathlessly entered her new supervisor's office. The bureau had acted fast and Catherine had been immediately promoted to Grissom's position as soon as word got out of his death. To them, Breeze guessed, it seemed only natural that she take his place.

"What is it, Breeze?" Catherine was doing paperwork and didn't even look up when Breeze walked in.

"Do you know anyone in the bureau whom I can talk to right now that speaks Italian?"

"Why?" 

Breeze explained the situation as best she could, "It's for Grissom's case. I have a print from a shoe Marlena found in his apartment but it's an Italian brand and the only information I could find on these shoes are in Italian." 

Catherine looked up in interest, a wince on her face, sensitive to the subject of Grissom. "Oh. I see." 

"So can you help me?" 

"I don't speak Italian."

"But do you know someone who does?"

"You don't really need to know anyone who speaks Italian. Do you know any Spanish?"

Breeze shrugged, "Some."

"Spanish and Italian are somewhat similar. You don't need to read the website, just know enough to navigate yourself to a telephone number and call their corporate office. Find something that somewhat resembles the word you're looking for."

"The corporate office is in Rome."

Catherine shrugged. "So? You're not paying the phone bill. Go. You're wasting time. _Arrivederci Roma._"

Breeze did a Navy salute—with two fingers—but Catherine didn't notice, for she was once again bent over her paperwork, and then turned on her heels and left, mumbling to herself on how Catherine's stress level had skyrocketed after she'd been put in charge.

She returned to her computers and sat down, blowing her blonde crimps from her face. She stared at the Aquila Footwear website or the "_Calzatura dell'aquila di Roma_" site. 

"I hate you," she mumbled as she tried to recall the Spanish that was lodged in the back of her mind, forgotten along with P.E. and prom dates.

When she gave up, she dug an ancient Berlitz Spanish-to-English-to-Spanish dictionary out from the recesses of her desk and flipped through the pages until she found what she was looking for. 

One of the side bars read "_Contatti_" which to Breeze looked a lot like "_contactos_", which meant "contacts". She clicked on it and found out she was right. Another option menu gave her the link "_Numeri di telefono_", which she also clicked on. 

Eventually she came to a screen that showed a list of phone numbers. Before each number was an animated flag of a country and then, after it, an extension number.

Adjacent to the small, waving United States flag was the extension 805 and the words, "for English/_per l'inglese_."

Pursing her lips and taking a deep breath, Breeze picked up the phone beside the computer and dialed the many numbers dictated to her on the screen. She crossed her middle and index fingers for luck, a childish habit she could not break.

It only rang twice before a recording asked her—in several different languages—to dial her extension. Breeze punched in 8-0-5 anxiously and waited, listening to terrible muzak.

Five minutes later, a female voice laced with a heavy Italian accent picked up Breeze's line, "_Calzatura dell'aquila di Roma_, this is Isotta speaking, how may I direct your call?"

"Hello, Isotta," Breeze began, "This is Breeze Hamelin, calling from the Las Vegas Criminalistics Bureau. In Las Vegas, Nevada? Ah, if I wanted to talk to someone about the sales of your Aquila boots, who would that be?"

"That would be Signore Vittorio Bongiorino. I shall transfer you now, Signorina Hamelin. _Grazie per la chiamata della calzatura di Aquila_."

Breeze tapped her foot impatiently, clicking her heel against the tile floor. Like Sasha, waiting was not her favorite part of the game. The bad muzak came back for ten minutes and then a somewhat affected male voice said, 

"This is Vittorio Bongiorino, how may I help you?" 

"Yes. Mister Bongiorino," Breeze sat up straight and fixed her hair as if he could see through the telephone. She explained her story and the case as best she could, having to stop every so often to repeat herself on Mr. Bongiorino's request. 

"So what you are saying Signorina Hamelin," Bongiorino said after a lengthy explanation. "You want me to tell you how many of our boots were sold…in America?"

"Yes. Well, in the Nevada area."

"This is for a murder investigation?" 

"Yes. An important one."

Bongiorino sighed into the phone. "Well, I am sorry to tell you this Signorina…there is _un problema_. Aquilas are sold _only_ in Rome. We are a very _elite_ brand, _capisca_? For Aquila boots to get from Italy to anywhere else is to order them from our website _or_ actually _come_ to Rome and purchase them."

"Can you give me _any_ sales records of the boot?"

Another sigh, "All right. I will see what I can do. What size?"

"Men's size ten."

"_Si_. You must remember--_Esclusivamente italiano. _Every Aquila boot ever made is sold in Rome. Finding American sales will be difficult."

"Please, Mister Bongiorino…this is very important…"

"_Farò il mio la cosa migliore_, Signorina. I will do my best. Give me your number, _cara_, and I will call you when I come up with something."

Breeze thanked Bongiorino and hung up, wondering how long it would take for him to get what Breeze was looking for. 

While she waited she tried to match the fourth print. It was a simple man's sneaker by Avia, a size twelve. The brand sounded very familiar.

__

Twelve?

The Aquila was a man's ten…the Avia was a twelve. Something didn't sit right. Why would one person have two shoe sizes?

"Well," Breeze said. "Hello…what's this here…"

"Breeze?"

Breeze looked up. Sasha and Marlena were in the doorway.

Marlena was holding a bag, "What'd ya got?"

"Plenty. Sit down, I just figured out something interesting."

Marlena and Sasha each pulled up a chair and put her bag in her lap, "Dish."

"Well, I matched a tennis shoe that most likely belong to Solange Tanguy."

Sasha pulled a latex glove from his pocket and put it on. He dipped into Marlena's plastic bag and pulled out a single tennis shoe, "These are Miss Tanguy's. We just got back from her house. Ked's, size six."

"Great. So that's done. Ah, this one is a Steve Madden boot, style's name is Old Vic. I think it's Lady Heather's."

"Why?" Marlena asked

"You found her prints there." 

"Could be Sara Sidle's. We found hers too." 

Breeze shrugged, "I don't think Sara would wear high-heeled Victorian boots. That's more my style." 

"Hm. Moving on."

"Moving on. I'm awaiting a call from a guy named Vittorio Bongiorino, who is in charge of sales for the shoe that belongs to our next print. It's a special boot made from Italy, called Aquilas. Well, according to Bongiorino, Aquilas are very exclusive and are only available in Italy. You can get them in the states two ways: via the internet or going to Italy and getting them. Has Grissom ever been to Italy?"

Sasha and Marlena shrugged.

"I didn't think you'd know."

"Well, we could know. All we'd have to do is check expense reports," said Marlena. "Tap into credit card histories." 

"Well, these boots, they're almost four hundred dollars and I don't know about you but I think Grissom would rather spent four hundred dollars on an ant farm that boots."

"My thoughts exactly," Sasha smirked. 

"Anyway, I don't know what makes these boots so special. The website's completely in Italian but what I can gather, they come in one style and a wide variety of colors and are one hundred percent _Italian_-made leather. There are only two lines—men's and women's—so it narrows it down some. I should be getting sales reports back from Bongiorino soon but he said it would be difficult trying to find any in the states, since they're all sold in Italy."

"Anything else? You said you found something interesting just as we came in," Marlena asked.

"I did. The Aquila was a size ten. The next print I found was a men's size twelve, on an Avia sneaker, which is a brand I do recall being a favorite of Grissom's?" she raised her pierced eyebrow. "I now remember that one time a couple months ago I complimented him on his shoes—"

"Why?" 

Breeze shrugged, "They looked new. I said, 'Cool shoes' and he gave me a weird look like he didn't know if it was an insult or a compliment but he said, 'Thanks. Avia.'"

The telephone rang. The three CSI's eyed it and Marlena and Sasha both turned to Breeze, who put it on speaker phone.

"Signorina Hamelin," announced Vittorio Bongiorino in his still somewhat affected voice, "I think I find it!"

"Found what? The sales?"

"Yes. See, I trace the Internet sales, since most people rather buy there than coming to Italy, which is understandable. Though if you can afford Aquila boots, why not a trip to Italy?" he laughed nasally and Sasha cringed as if it was the most uncouth noise he'd ever heard. "Anyway, through Internet sales I manage to find exactly sixty-four people in America who bought pairs of Aquila in the past eight years, which was when the Aquila line started—eight years ago. Those in the state of Nevada? Twenty-eight. Those who purchased men's size ten? Seven."

"Really?" 

"_Si_, Signorina. Shall I send you the list?"

"Sure, that'd be wonderful."

"Wonderful! Just give me your e-mail and I shall go, boom, boom and send it to you."

"Thank you…um, _grazie_, signore," Breeze said and quickly gave him her e-mail address before hanging up with him and letting out a whoop of relief. "Wowza!" she went to the computer that still had the Aquila website on the screen and logged on to her personal settings. "The sooner we get these names, the sooner we can eliminate people."

Marlena nodded, "And the sooner we find Grissom's killer."


	7. The Culprit

Breeze quickly read the short, freshly printed list straight from Rome of those in the Nevada area who'd purchased Aquila boots in a men's size ten. 

"Grissom's not on it," she announced. "Neither is anyone else on our suspect list, which shows no one bought him a pair," she added, handing it to Marlena, who sped-read it. "He had no real relatives to speak of. I don't think a distant cousin would buy him four hundred dollar shoes."

"I think we may have to add someone," Marlena said, looking up from the list.

"Who?" asked Sasha. 

"Sean Gentileschi," Marlena tapped the name on the list. "He appears on this list twice. Sound familiar to anybody?"

Breeze pursed her lips and Sasha crinkled his eyebrows. 

.

"I really do know the name," Breeze admitted. "But I can't remember from where."

"Sara's ex!" Sasha blurted suddenly. Breeze gave a little gasp of shock and enlightenment.

"_Yes_!" she nodded. "I_ knew _I knew that name."

"Sara's ex," Marlena nodded.

"_Yes!_ Sara did walk around for a couple years as Sara Gentileschi, didn't she? Before she divorced and took back her maiden name? You don't forget a name like _Gentileschi_."

"I met him once," Sasha jeered. "A real sonuvabitch, that guy. He strutted around the place like he owned it. All I said was hi, and he gave me his whole life story in under a minute, the arrogant bastard. He's a trust baby, y'know, which is probably the only reason Sara married him in the first place."

"Oh _come_ on," Breeze rolled her eyes. "Sara's really not the type who would marry for money."

"Ahem," Marlena interjected. "I'd rather we _not_ talk about Sara's love life, especially since she's only down the hall and the way you two bicker, she might hear you. Not to mention it's unbecoming to gossip, _children_," she added. "Now, this makes it all the more interesting. This places Sean at the scene of the crime. Question: what is Sara's ex doing at Grissom's place? Sara hates him. Sean, that is."

Breeze chewed on her lip, "Why don't you ask Sara? You found her fingerprints there, right? They could have been there at the same time."

"Sara hasn't seen her ex in a year," Marlena explained. "He picks up their daughter at daycare but she doesn't see him. The way she talks about him too, is so full of venom and disdain."

"Her ex didn't really talk much about her," Sasha revealed. "Not when I met him anyway. I know he lives in Indian Springs now. He owns a health spa in California."

Marlena blew some stray hair from her face and re-proposed her question, "Well, why would Sara's ex have a reason to be in Grissom's apartment?" 

"We can just ask him," Breeze piped up.

"Or better yet," said Sasha, "we can ask Sara."

Marlena hurried down the hall to Sara's office, hoping to catch her before she left for her night off. She nearly slammed into a handful of people on the way but managed to make it in one piece.

Sara was indeed in her office, a very small office she once shared with Catherine and now with Warrick. A pretty little girl with curly brown hair was sitting on top of Sara's desk, dressed in overalls and a pink T-shirt, her white sneakered feet swinging back and forth—this was obviously Evie, Sara's four-year-old. Sara was standing in front of Evie, fussing with the child's hair. 

"You look beautiful," Sara said to Evie while using, strangely, sign language. 

"Thank you," Evie replied, also signing back.

"Who's my baby?" Sara continued to sign and speak. 

"Me," Evie signed back. 

Marlena knocked on the doorframe to get Sara's attention. Evie saw Marlena first.

"Mamma!" Evie pointed at Marlena. 

Sara looked up and smiled her gap-toothed smile. She gently pressed Evie's arm down, "Don't point, sweetie. Come on in, Marlena." 

"I couldn't help noticing you were using sign language," Marlena said, entering. "Evie's not deaf, is she?" 

"Oh, no, no," Sara shook her head. "I was just teaching her. Gil was…teaching me. He had otosclerosis, you know, so he used it often."

"I know. She's very good at it. So are you." 

"Thank you," Sara said and signed and then went back to Evie's hair, braiding it. "What's up?

"Nothing. Just taking a stroll. What are you doing for your night off?"

"Oh I'm not sure yet. I think Evie and I'll go out for pizza, rent a great girlie movie, curl up on the couch."

"I _love_ pizza!" exclaimed Evie.

Marlena smiled. "Sounds like fun, like something my mother used to do. She'd take me and my sister Marilyn out to dinner and a movie once a month. Just us. My dad and brother would stay home."

"C'mon, Marlena. You're mind's a one-way mirror—I can practically see the gears turning in your head. What's _really_ up?" Sara asked.

"I, um," Marlena took a few steps closer to Sara. "I was just wondering…when was the last time you saw your ex-husband?"

"Sean?" Sara cocked her head. "Oh, I…I don't know. I guess maybe a year. He comes and gets Evie once and awhile but I don't see him. I've seen his girlfriend a couple of times though when she drops Evie off in the morning or when I go pick her up. She's some number, Marlena. She's stacked like a house of cards, like a life-size Barbie. Sometimes I think that's how Evie sees her, right Evie?"

"Barbie," chirped Evie.

Marlena chuckled a bit.

"So why are you asking me about Sean?" Sara clipped a purple plastic barrette to the end of Evie's braid and leaned against the desk.

"We found footprints at Grissom's that we believe belong to Sean. We traced them back to him, his boots, called Aquilas?"

"Oh. _Oh_, those ugly Italian ones?" Sara crinkled her nose. "I recently threw out an old pair of those boots. He forgot them in the back of the closet when he moved out, the slob. They sat there for a long time. I wondered what was stinking up the bedroom and then I cleaned out my closet—something I never do, believe me—and I found the damn things in the way, way back. They were practically decomposing." 

"I thought you said you sold all of his things?"

Sara paused to open one of her desk drawers and withdrew a small toy for Evie. "Oh, I did," she said finally. "Most of his clothes I couldn't get rid of, either, including at least three pairs of shoes, including those Italian ones. But seriously, no matter how gullible people are—_you _try selling two-year-old hiking boots."

"So you kept them?" 

"Mm-hm," Sara nodded. "Well, the shoes of course I threw out. Sometimes I'll use the clothes as cleaning rags but they just sit in the drawers ninety-eight percent of the time."

"That's funny. Most disgruntled wives I know prefer to _burn_ the remainder of their husbands' belongings."

Sara raised an eyebrow, "What are you getting at?"

"I just need to know where I can contact Sean."

"I think I may have his number somewhere." Keeping a hand on Evie's leg, Sara opened her Rolodex and flipped through it, whispering to herself. "I think this is it, unless he moved." She handed Marlena the card. "If his _girlfriend_ answers the phone, her name's Keil. Keil Anson."

Marlena read the card: _Gentileschi, Sean_. "Thanks."

From the list of buyers of Aquila boots that Breeze had printed up, Sasha had managed to pull up a credit card history of Sean Gentileschi from the past eight years, since the number of Sean's Visa was right there on the paper not once but twice. 

"Visa. It's everywhere you want to be," Breeze said, quoting the television commercial and who was sitting behind him as he traced the number. "And everywhere we need it to be."

"How lucky," smiled Sasha. 

"No kidding. Now we don't need to pry when we drag him in for questioning."

"God, I love the Internet."

Marlena stopped by the room, "I got Sean Gentileschi's address and phone number from Sara. You were right, Sash—he lives in Indian Springs."

"And still does," Sasha turned in his chair. "His credit card number was on the sheet that Breeze got from Italy. According to the credit card history, he used this card to buy not only the boots but to pay for his tickets to Italy—"

"Tickets? More than one?"

"The date he bought the tickets—February ninth, 2003—and the date he bought the boots are consistent with Sara and Sean's honeymoon, between June sixteenth and June twenty-sixth of 2003," Breeze explained. "Don't ask me how I remember that, it's one of those weird things you pull out of nowhere."

"Well, the night of June sixteenth, he also bought vast amounts of fine Italian wine, hired a limo to cart them around Italy and there were several room service bills through the twenty-sixth," Sasha listed. "I'd say you're right on the nose, Breeze."

Breeze beamed, "I knew it."

"Well, seems like Sara and her Casanova had a fun time in Italy," Marlena sighed, taking the paper from Sasha and looking at the expense reports. "Wonder what went wrong?"

"Ring the bastard and find out," Sasha suggested. 

It was one of the best things Marlena had heard all day.


	8. Sean

Early in the afternoon after her last shift, Marlena excitedly hurried behind the one-way mirror to listen in on the interview with Sara's ex. Sasha eagerly volunteered to do the questioning; it must've been a guy thing. She spotted Detective Browning in the background of the interrogation room, overlooking the grilling.

40-year-old Sean Gentileschi was seated in the interrogation room, wearing a pair of crisp khaki slacks and a baby blue polo tee. His face sported a razor stubble and his jet black hair was a little long, to his collar, making him look younger than he really was. He jiggled his foot nervously, toyed with his sunglasses and appeared uneasy, with his blue eyes shifting around the room.

Sasha entered the room and introduced himself, "Hello. Mr. Gentileschi?"

"Yeah," Sean Gentileschi stood. "You pronounced my name right. Jen-till-shee. I'm a descendent of Orazio Gentileschi, you know, the famous artist."

"Great. I'm Sasha Zarek, Crime Scene Investigator. Before we start the investigation, I'll need to take a shoeprint. Lift up your foot for me please?"

Looking bewildered, Gentileschi lifted his right foot and Sasha bent to put a transfer underneath it.

"Interesting shoe," remarked Sasha as he pressed down on Gentileschi's foot. "Lift again, please." Gentileschi obeyed and Sasha removed the transfer. He sealed it and put it in his folder. "Thank you very much.

"Mr. Gentileschi," Sasha said, sitting, "please be aware that this conversation will be audiotaped _and_ videotaped." He nodded towards Cameron Howe, manning the video camera.

"Sure," Gentileschi said, also sitting; cool as a cucumber despite his anxious exterior. "You, ah, said this was about Sara?"

"Let's go chronologically, Mr. Gentileschi," Sasha said. "For the record, please state your full name and occupation?"

"Sean Burgess Gentileschi; I own and operate a day spa in Beverly Hills, California; I do so from my home in Indian Springs, in my mansion: the House of Lomi.."

Marlena was impressed.

"So, Mr. Gentileschi—"

"Just call me Sean, please. I _know_ my last name ain't exactly a party to say. Or spell for that matter."

"Okay…Sean," Sasha continued. "You were recently both married and divorced to Sara Lucille Sidle?" 

Gentileschi scoffed, "If you can call it married, sure."

"What do you mean by that?" 

Sighing, Gentileschi shook his head, "Sara…was a good time. Funny, smart, independent…a demon in the sack. Wrong gal to tie down, however. See," Gentileschi leaned in, "I never…I don't…I don't think Sara was the…really the marrying kind. The first few months we were married, yeah, cool, fine. But she'd just have these sudden mood swings, you know? She'd be happy one day but become depressed the next…go crazy psycho-bitch. She'd storm out of the house and go…somewhere. I don't know. I just figured she would drive around until she blew off some steam because she'd be more contented when she came back."

"How long were you married to Sara Sidle?" 

Sean paused, "Almost five years."

"And _how_ long was she exhibiting this behavior? This leaving-and-coming-back thing?"

Another pause, "I think she's always been like that. I didn't start noticing it until maybe a year into the marriage. She became pregnant with Evie around that time."

"Did you ever find out where Sara went?" 

Yet a third pause, "Yeah. I followed her one night."

"Where did she go?" 

__

"Twenty-four San Matteo Boulevard," Sean replied flatly. "Sound familiar?"

"Yes." Sasha nodded, knowing exactly what Gentileschi was going to say.

"Home of Gil Grissom."

Marlena's blood ran cold. She was familiar with address of course but to hear _this_…she could hardly wait to hear where this was going to lead.

"I spied on them," Sean readily admitted. "I saw _my wife_ in the arms of that…that…asshole," he spat finally. "I kept thinkin', 'what's he got that I don't got, besides graying hair?'"

Sasha repressed a chuckle and remained professional. "Getting back on the subject of your daughter, Evie…"

"Ah. She was one of our bigger arguments," Sean said, nodding. "Sara was too protective of this kid. Everything had to be _her_ way with Evie. I almost had no say in naming her! I had my heart set on naming our little girl Christina after _my_ godmother. But Sara was hell-bent on naming her Evelyn and wouldn't settle on Christina for anything but a middle name. Even then, Sara changed it to Christine. I tried to change it behind her back, too. 

"Sara had needed an emergency C-section…and while she was recovering, the nurses asked me if the baby had a name. So I called her Christina Megan Gentileschi, which was the name _I_ though we'd decided on. When Sara found out, naturally, she was pissed off and changed it, this time behind _my _back. The kid's name was changed three times before she left the hospital as _Evelyn Christine Sidle_. So you see, Sara always had to have her way."

Sasha pursed his lips, wondering what to say next. 

__

Come on, Sash, Marlena silently pleaded. _Sic 'em_. 

During the silence, Sara and Breeze sauntered in and stood beside Marlena behind the one-way mirror. Sara looked extremely subdued and somewhat pale.

"How's it going?" Breeze asked, handing Marlena a cup of coffee.

"It's a strange story," was all Marlena said, taking the cup. "You alright, Sara?"

"Fine," Sara answered quickly.

Following a long pause, it was obvious that Sasha had no need to think of anything else to ask, because Sean Gentileschi continued.

"After Evie was born," he was saying, "and time went by, things got better. But, ah, not for long. Something didn't sit right with me."

"What do you mean?" Sasha asked, leaning in on Gentileschi. 

An additional pause from Gentileschi made Marlena screw up her mouth in habit. He threw his sunglasses on the table and squeezed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. "I really loved that little girl, you know. I mean, she was my little lucky star. I bet Sara didn't tell you I renamed my resort after her—Eve's Garden. Heh, you know, at first, I didn't suspect anything. She just looked _exactly_ like Sara."

Behind her, Marlena heard Sara intake a sharp breath.

"But as she got older…and we would greet people on the street…they would never say how she looked like me. You'd think she'd look _somewhat_ like me, right? Never once did I hear: 'she has her father's nose' or eyes or ears. Never. When I brought this up to Sara, she covered it up, saying Evie got her looks more from her grandparents, Sara's parents. I knew that was bullshit."

"What are you getting at, Mister Gentileschi?" Sasha raised an eyebrow.

"I had DNA testing done, okay?!" flared Gentileschi. "I did it for Evie."

Sara moaned but it emerged like the fragile mew of a kitten. Out of the corner of her eye, Breeze saw her making a run for it. Marlena stiffened, barely breathing.

"When you did the DNA testing," resumed Sasha, "What did you discover?"

Gentileschi's gaze hardened, "The obvious was revealed—Evie wasn't mine."

Marlena felt a chill in her bones. She could tell Sasha was speechless because, for once, his mouth was open and no words were coming out. Marlena looked to her left—Breeze was still there but Sara had exited the room. 

Sasha racked his brain to try and think of the next question he was supposed to ask. This had come as such a shock it threw him off-course. He decided to veer away from the topic of Evie and went a totally different direction.

"Mr. Gentileschi…did you know the deceased?"

"Know him? I knew that he was screwin' around with my wife and he was her boss and that's about it. I never spoke to the guy."

"You've been to his house?"

"Once. That one time that I told you about a few minutes ago—to do some novice spying."

"Did you go inside?"

"Hell no."

Sasha paused, "You were there once? Just once?"

"Yes."

"Stayed outside?"

"Yes."

"You sure?"

"Why?" 

"Just answer me: are you sure?"

"_You_ answer _me_: Why?"

Sasha cleared his throat, "We have evidence that proves otherwise. See, we matched your shoeprint that we lifted only moments go to a second shoeprint we found inside Gil Grissom's apartment. Now," Sasha leaned in, his steel eyes flashing with determination, "do you wanna think over my last question?"

Sean retorted with his own defiant stare. He too, leaned in and met Sasha eye-to-eye. "I think," he replied, "I want my lawyer."

Sean Gentileschi's lawyer was a high-priced number who wore Armani and Rolex and a smug smirk. Sasha hated him the moment he entered the interrogation room an hour later. But he was a CSI—he felt almost obligated to hate lawyers, along with those FBI bastards. Either way, Sasha could read this guy like an open Dr. Seuss book but this time the illustrations were not pretty.

The lawyer sauntered right up to Sasha and gave a firm handshake that gently crushed every bone in Sasha's hand. He could almost hear his knuckles crack but didn't let his face show discomfort. 

"Evan James Leigh, attorney-at-law," the lawyer announced as if it was the most important factoid in the entire case. He sat down stiffly beside Gentileschi. 

"Sasha Zarek, CSI-Two," was Sasha's answer through gritted teeth. He too then sat, facing this oily-slick lawyer and his client.

"Mister…_Zarek_, is it? Let me be frank. How can you accuse my client of the murder of a man he did not know?"

"Didn't know? Mister Leigh, you've been misinformed. Although Mister Gentileschi did not know the victim _personally_, he knew _of_ him. And that's all it takes."

"Of course Sean knew _of_ the victim. He was his wife's boss, was he not? Besides, reports say Gilbert Thatcher Grissom was poisoned internally. Now wouldn't you say that takes steps to being a bit more _personal_ than if my client was to, oh, I don't know, put a bullet through his head?"

"I'd say it's personal," Sasha said firmly, "especially since the victim was sleeping with your client's wife."

The look on Leigh's face told Sasha that this information was completely unknown to him. Sasha continued,

"We also found a footprint in Gilbert Grissom's residence that matches Mister Gentileschi's—Aquila boots, size men's ten. They're very rare, and very _expensive_, from what I hear. We understand Aquilas are made and purchased only in Italy. Mister Gentileschi was in Italy nearly five years ago according to expense reports, which also told us he purchased a pair of Aquila boots. Credit card history says he even purchased a second pair only last year."

Gentileschi stuck out his chin like a defiant kindergartener, "Damn boots. They may be Italian but they suck when it comes to travel. I wore them three hours a day and they fall apart. Three-hundred-and-fifty dollars, my ass."

"So," Leigh sighed, imperturbable as ever, "you found footprints. How do you know they belong to Sean? There are hundreds of men in Nevada with a size ten shoe."

"Indeed," Sasha replied. "However, consumer reports say that only seven people in the state of Nevada have a size ten Aquila boot—and two of them belong to Mister Gentileschi here. Might I add, he's also _wearing_ the said boots?"

Leigh and Gentileschi were both quiet. 

Behind the one-way mirror, Marlena's heart was beating a mile a minute. Beside her, Breeze was getting goosebumps so that she untied her sweatshirt from her waist and pulled it over her head.

"Think we got 'em?" Breeze asked, fluffing out her hair.

"Dunno," Marlena said hoarsely. "But why else would he call in his lawyer?"

Breeze shrugged, "To prove he's innocent, that's why. It's why everyone has one. It's why I have one."

"I don't. Shh…they're starting again."

"Do you mind telling me how your footprint got in Gil Grissom's residence?" Sasha was saying. 

"Careful, Sean," Leigh advised.

Gentileschi let out a long, drawn out sigh as if he was the victim in this whole ordeal. 

"I did go to…Gil Grissom's home…the day he died," he began, "with violent intentions." 

"Sean," Leigh said firmly, as if talking to a disobedient puppy. But Gentileschi continued unabashed,

"I wanted to let that bastard know that Sara pledged her love to _me_, her fidelity to _me_ and he should keep his fuckin' hands to _himself_!" Sean fumed. "I went around ten AM, had a steel baseball bat in hand. I didn't anticipate to use it—just as a threat, shake it in his face, to show him what he'd be kissin' next if he didn't stop screwin' around with my wife."

Sasha was now intrigued, "Did you physically fight?"

Gentileschi sneered, "Didn't your mama ever tell you to use your words and not your fists?"

"No. My mama was a Cossack. She told me to use a shotgun. But I digress."

"Anyway, we didn't throw punches, we threw verbal gauntlets. We exchanged words for a good hour."

Marlena could picture the out-of-control Sean waving a steel bat in Grissom's face…

_"What the fuck do you think you're doing with Sara, God-damn son of a bitch?! What the fuck's goin' on in your head, you geriatric bastard?!"_

She could picture Grissom standing his ground firmly, unwavering, never even flinching…

__

"Sara and I have an honest relationship…if it's bothering you so much why don't you talk to Sara about it? She's the one who set everything up. She's the one who's been throwing herself at me."

"So you were there for an hour?"

"Yeah, before I went to lunch with my girlfriend."

"Girlfriend?" Sasha raised an inquisitive eyebrow. "You made a big stink over your wife having an affair and you have a girlfriend?"

"It's complicated. Sara was with Gil from the get-go. I didn't get together with Keil until after I left Sara."

"So you figure if she does it, you could, too."

"I _told_ you, it's complicated…I actually _missed_ Sara, something that I didn't realize till I left. I missed Evie especially. I wanted them back, I really did. I figured if I could get Gil to end the affair, then I could get Sara back and push Keil away."

"And you'd be a happy family again?"

"Yes. But apparently someone else had other plans."

"Apparently," Sasha sat back, as did Gentileschi and Leigh. "Apparently. So, you were there from ten to eleven AM?"

"Give a take a minute," Gentileschi nodded. "I left my home office around eight, left Indian Springs, went to Gil's…met Keil for lunch by eleven fifteen."

"Can anyone confirm this?"

"Sure. Keil, for one. And my secretary. Her name's Layla, Layla Feldman. She's a senior at LVU and works for me as a source of income," Gentileschi bragged. "I'll get you their contacts ASAP."

"Uh-huh. You do realize, Mister Gentileschi, that you could be arrested for reckless endangerment _and_ trespassing?"

"For what?!" Gentileschi flared. 

"For threatening Gil Grissom with a baseball bat _and_ for spying on him when he was with Sara." 

Gentileschi turned to Leigh, who nodded, sighed and immediately became just as enraged, 

"It doesn't make sense! Gil Grissom is dead! How can you bring him up on such charges? You don't have a confession!"

"Oh, yeah we do," Sasha replied gleefully. "We have the conversation both audio and videotaped. In my line of work, it's as good as."

Leigh sat back, defeated. Sasha sat back as well, thinking he had done a good job. Behind the mirror, Marlena breathed a little easier, _knowing_ he had done a good job.


	9. The Thong Song

In the middle of Sasha's interrogation of Sean Gentileschi, after Evan James Leigh, attorney-at-law, entered, a hand latched onto Breeze's shoulder and pulled her into the hallway. Marlena didn't even notice.

"Ouch!" she hissed and came face-to-face with Greg Sanders. "Greg! What'd you do that for? That was _really_ important!"

"Sorry," mumbled the lab tech. "But _this_ is really important. Here." He thrust a piece of paper at Breeze.

"What am I looking at?" 

"It's a tox report for the pills Marlena took from Grissom's apartment. Did she tell you about them?"

"Yeah, she said she found over a dozen of little bottles of herbal remedies. What about them?" Breeze peered at Greg over the paper, raising her eyebrow. 

"Did that hurt?" Greg pointed to his own eyebrow, referring to Breeze's pierced hoop, today silver with a little blue glass ball in the center.

"Yes," she replied coldly. "Don't change the subject, Greg. What about the pills?"

"Well, I finished processing them—sorry about the delay but Catherine came to me with something that I had to get out of the way first—and I found that all the pills in the bottle of pycnogenol were coated with your murder weapon."

"They were coated with strychnine?"

"Yeah. It's like someone put strychnine in the bottle and shook it up to cover all the pills. Strychnine has no taste—especially when it's swallowed—and no smell; it washes away with water due to the fineness of the powder, much like talcum. Following ingestion, strychnine is rapidly absorbed through all the mucous membranes especially the stomach and small intestines."

"So there's no way around it. Even though it washes away with water, he still swallowed the water when he took the pills, thus swallowing the poison."

"Yup." 

"Okay then. Thank you very much, Greg."

Greg pulled the corners of his mouth down. "That's all I get?" 

"Yup," Breeze flashed a smile and went back behind the one way mirror, folding the tox report into quarters and putting it in the back pocket of her blue jeans.

After Sean Gentileschi and his lawyer were gotten rid of and the team got an examination room to talk, Breeze revealed the tox report to Marlena and Sasha. 

"Greg gave this to me while you guys were with Sean," she said, handing it to Marlena. "The strychnine was found on the pycnogenol, finely coated. Greg said it was like someone sprinkled the strychnine into the bottle and shook it up."

"We need to find strychnine on Gentileschi then, to nail him," Sasha said, reading the report over Marlena's shoulder.

"By the way, Sasha," Marlena said, "that was one of the most interesting interviews I've seen in a very long time."

Sasha chuckled. "Yeah. He was a pisser, that Gentileschi." 

"Okay, kids, let's talk alibis," Marlena sat at the table and her team followed suit. "Breeze, you take Keil Anson, Sean's girlfriend. I'll take Layla, the secretary. Sasha, I'd like you to go to Grissom's apartment, see if there's _anything _I might have missed, just in case. Any more strychnine. If you find a mysterious white powder hanging around somewhere—_any_ white powder—bag it." 

"Gotcha," Sasha nodded. 

"Breeze, you and I will meet up later at Sean Gentileschi's home to do a strychnine search. Before I leave for Layla Feldman's, I'll get a warrant just in case Sean puts up a fight."

"Which he will."

"I don't doubt it," agreed Breeze. 

"Okay kids," Marlena said, blowing some stray hair strands away from her face. "Let's go."

Sasha was almost excited about going to Grissom's apartment but didn't show it. He was always fascinated by Grissom's line of expertise and had only briefly seen the creepy crawlers he kept everywhere. Marlena had told him about the butterfly collection and the Siamese scorpion but he had only heard about everything else. 

He showed his ID to the guard who was safeguarding the crime scene and stepped under the yellow tape and made his way into Grissom's home. 

Sasha stood in the living room for a few minutes just looking. The butterfly collection was as impressive as Marlena had said it was. A poster of a colorful diagram of the inner anatomy of a beetle was framed and hanging on the opposite wall. He didn't find any actual bugs until he entered the bedroom, where he found a display of terrariums containing Grissom's prizewinning cockroaches, fire ants, scarab beetles, the scorpion and a trio of tarantulas. 

Sasha knelt and observed the tarantulas with wonder. "Whoa," he whispered, tapping lightly on the glass, which made one of the hairy eight-legged things scuttle from one side of the terrarium to the other at the sound of Sasha's beating. Sasha chuckled, chastised himself for fooling around and got to work. 

He set his field kit on Grissom's still-unmade bed and opened it. Armed with a flashlight and gloved hands, he began to scout out everything. He shook out every article of clothing and got nothing more than dust particles. Sasha tried hard not to sneeze. 

He threw the covers off the bed, sprayed the sheets with luminol, shut off the lights and dragged out the RUVIN, putting on the neon orange glasses that he always found fashionable. When he switched on the machine, he got what he expected, in abundance: vaginal fluids; semen…it looked like a hotel bed. Sasha grimaced and shut off the RUVIN, but not before he took pictures of his findings and taking scrapings. 

Sasha then got on his stomach and lifted the dust ruffle of Grissom's bed to look underneath. The coldness of the hardwood floor seeped through Sasha's button-down shirt as he shimmied slightly underneath the bed frame to get a better look underneath. A button was digging into his lower abdomen, just above the navel. He shined his flashlight underneath the bed, hoping he would be able to see … something.

And he did. 

He had to scootch under the bed frame more than he would have liked to reach it, the back of his neck drenched with beads of sweat and the button almost breaking the skin. When Sasha withdrew it and got a better look at what it was, he had to make sure he was in the right apartment. 

It had been crumpled toward the center of the floor beneath the bed, as if someone had kicked it there, to hide it: a small pile of peach-colored silk and lace. A pair of a woman's thong underwear. 

If he wasn't so serious, Sasha would have burst out laughing. He did giggle a bit as he bagged it. 

Wait till the girls see this, he thought. Once bagged, he noticed the tiny letters HPJ stitched into the elastic band of the thong.

After finishing the search of the bedroom, he continued to the living room, bathroom and kitchen, where he took a scraping of the lipstick from the wine glass found in Grissom's sink, and some more lip prints found on the other wine glasses, one with dark red lipstick. The color looked familiar. Then he remembered it was because Marlena had showed him another glass with the same color imprinted on it. 

__

Unless Grissom had some dirty little secrets, these lipstick prints definitely belong to a woman, he thought.

As Sasha left Grissom's apartment with the lip prints and the thong panties, he flipped open his cell phone and stretched out the antenna with his teeth, then punched speed dial three: Marlena. 

"Reagan," came the tired voice of his now-captain.

"Hey," Sasha said, "what's soft, silky, goes up your butt and underneath Grissom's bed?"

A pause. "Sash, I really don't want to know."

"I found a pair of thong underwear. A woman's, obviously. I want to get them down to the lab and see if I can get them checked out; see if there's DNA on them."

"Most likely."

"Where are you?" 

"Outside of the city, on my way to Layla Feldman's apartment, Sean Gentileschi's secretary. To get an alibi. Breeze is on her way to Indian Springs to get one from Keil Anson."

"Who?"

"Sean's girlfriend. It's the only way to clear Sean's name."

"Why do we want to clear Sean's name?" Sasha rolled his eyes and, after putting his field kit on the floor on the passenger side of the CSI Tahoe, leaned against the driver's side door.

"We want to clear only those who are _innocent_," Marlena replied. 

"Almost everything points to Sean, Marlena."

Another pause. "Key word? Almost. Sash, we still have to pursue Lady Heather and Sara, okay? We already proved that Solange didn't do it due to lack of motive and not enough evidence and the only strychnine we found was used by her sister in her garden, her sister who didn't even know Grissom and—"

"Did you say Lady Heather?" Sasha interrupted.

"Yes. Why?"

Sasha flung open the Tahoe door and dug into his field kit and pulled out the bag containing the thong. "The thong I found," he said, "has initials on it: HPJ."

"HPJ?" Marlena dwelled on this for a moment before answering. "That's a monogram. Heather Jeanne Paruvski. Lady Heather's real name." 

"We've already proved Lady Heather was in Grissom's apartment, right?" Sasha began to pace, the bag tucked under his arm. "Well, now we know what she was doing."

"Not necessarily. Did you find any fluids on the sheets?" 

Sasha winced. "I got scrapings but they looked old. You know, looking for sperm on my ex-supervisor's bed is not the nicest job in the entire world."

"I won't hold it against you. Listen, Sash, I gotta go. Get the thong to the lab and the scrapings, too." Then she hung up without another word. 

Sasha hung up not soon after and put his cell back into his pocket. He took the bag from under his arm and looked at the thong through the plastic. 

"Lady Heather," he said, "you have a date with Greg Sanders."


	10. Layla, You Got Me On My Knees

Marlena pressed the end button on her cell phone and tossed it in the back seat of her car and hoped that no one called her for a few hours. She parked her car and waited for Detective Browning. She closed her eyes and turned on the radio to a jazz station. 

The air conditioner blew cold air on her face and neck. Her dirty-blond hair was blown straight today but it was no easier to handle than it was curly. It kept getting in her face and was now starting to frizz slightly in the dry Nevada heat. She pulled a headband from her consol and slid it on. Then she reached for her new pack of Parliaments that she hid underneath the driver's seat, took one out and put it between her lips. She lit up with a lighter that she concealed in a lipstick holder. She took a few drags and relaxed a little. After the cigarette was half finished she put it in the ashtray balanced on her cup holder, folded her arms on her steering wheel and put her head down to nap, like an elementary school student playing Seven-Up in a dark classroom.

Kenyon Browning finally arrived in his Impala half an hour later, looking suave in a slate blue suit, his hair now looking more blue than black in the sun. He slicked his hair back with a comb like a fifties greaser and sauntered up to Marlena Reagan's Dodge Ram and peered in. She was out like a light. He tapped on the driver's side window. When Marlena didn't move, he knocked louder, which stirred her. 

"Good morning," he said. 

Marlena winced, stretched and rolled down her window, "You're late."

"You were asleep," Kenyon retorted.

"At least I was here on time," she grumbled as she stepped out of her car after snubbing out her Parliament and popping a couple of Altoids in her mouth.

"I thought you quit smoking," the detective said. 

"That's just what I tell Catherine. She's anal about smoking. At least Grissom never bitched," Marlena yawned. "I thought we were here to bug Layla Feldman. What am I doing on trial here?"

Kenyon gave a smug smile, gave a playful shove and the pair went to find Layla Feldman. 

Layla Feldman's apartment complex was as ritzy as one in Beverly Hills. It was peach-colored stucco and had glass doors. There was a doorman in a clean-cut burgundy uniform and all the tenements had balconies and large picture windows. Flowers and other ornamental shrubs and trees decorated the entrance of the development. It was figured that Sean Gentileschi obviously paid well.

Layla lived in number 622 and when she opened the door, Marlena was surprised to find that she towered over her.

No more than five feet tall and easily only a hundred pounds soaking wet, twenty-one-year-old Layla Feldman had a caramel complexion, straight chin-length red hair and striking dark blue eyes. Freckles dusted the crests of her cheeks and across her button nose. She wore small frameless glasses. Her dress was casual: blue denim jeans with the cuffs rolled up and a yellow camisole with a matching cardigan. Her feet were bare, her toenails painted party-girl pink.

"Hello," she greeted Marlena and Kenyon with a sweet-pea smile. 

"Hi. Layla Feldman?" Marlena asked.

"That's me. You are?"

"CSI Marlena Reagan, Las Vegas Crime Lab and Detective Kenyon Browning from the Las Vegas Police Department."

Layla's eyes widened, her eye brows raised and her arms crossed. "I had a feeling one of you would be here eventually."

"Oh…did Keil Anson call you by any chance?"

"Nuh-uh. I think one of your colleagues called for my boss a few days ago, a guy; he had an interesting name…"

"Sasha Zarek?"

"That's it," Layla leaned against the doorframe. "So, what can I do for you, CSI Reagan, Detective Browning?" 

"We just need to ask you a few questions concerning your boss, Sean Gentileschi," Kenyon said firmly. 

"Sure. Come on in," Layla stepped aside and let Kenyon and Marlena through.

"So, you're Sean Gentileschi's secretary?" Marlena asked as they stepped inside the apartment. 

The living room was very large, roomy, done in pastels of purple, blue and pink. Every seating area appeared so cushy soft it looked as if it could swallow someone. There was a small kitchen to the right of the front door with a pass-through window leading towards a dining area for six with high-backed chairs and a heavy glass table, on top of which a sleek white cat was curled up, eyeing the intruders. There was a small corridor leading towards the bedroom, of which the door was slightly ajar. It seemed a bit grandiose for one person, especially a college student. From somewhere in the apartment, soft contemporary music played. Layla had opened her balcony and let the soft breeze play about the room. Wind chimes tinkled faintly as well.

"Yes," Layla replied after a beat. She closed the door behind her. "I've been working for Sean for almost four years."

"You call him by his first name?" Kenyon raised an eyebrow

Layla shrugged, "He insisted. Come sit at the dining table. Want anything to drink? I don't have any coffee but I got some sweet tea already made."

"That'd be great, thanks," Marlena smiled. 

"Sure," Kenyon agreed.

Before going into the kitchen, Layla shooed the cat off the table, "Come on, Clapton. That's not polite."

"Clapton?" Marlena smiled.

Layla smiled too as she set the cat on the floor, "Like Eric Clapton? I love him, my folks love him…I was named after one of his songs." 

"Oh… as in, '_Layla, you got me on my knees'_?" Marlena asked and Layla chuckled.

"Enough about me. Sit down, I'll get the tea."

Layla went into the kitchen. Kenyon and Marlena looked around the living room, admiring the elaborate entertainment center of white Formica and glass. A large mass of books occupied her shelving units along with some knickknack statuettes behind the see-thru doors. Photos were displayed and from the looks of it, they were mainly of Layla and her family and friends. But some caught Kenyon's eye that made him very confused.

"Marlena?" Kenyon asked. "What's wrong with these pictures?" He picked one up and handed it to her.

Marlena was dumbfounded at Kenyon's find.There were half a dozen or so photographs of Layla and Sean. Not in casual, at-work, employer-employee poses, but in arms-around-each-other-lovey-dovey poses. She subtly began to sing softly, "One of these things is not like the other" from _Sesame Street_. Kenyon tighten his lips closed to keep a chuckle from escaping.

"Oh…you've seen my pictures," came Layla's crestfallen voice. Marlena straightened and turned to face her. Kenyon followed suit. Layla held one tall glass tumbler of sweet tea in each hand and looked sort of frightened. 

"Yes. They're very interesting…I had no idea that you and Sean were so close," Marlena said coolly, trying not to be rude to this sweet girl.

"Please," urged Layla, "sit. I can explain the lot of it."

Marlena and Kenyon meandered over to the glass table and sat. Layla put a glass of sweet tea in front of each of them and Marlena couldn't resist, her throat was parched. She took a long sip. Kenyon, however, didn't touch his glass but moved it to the side a bit and folded his arms on the glass table.

"You have to promise not to tell Keil, though," Layla implored. "She might have Sean fire me and it's such steady work and the income is exceptional…"

"And you can't beat the benefits," added Kenyon with sarcastic undertone.

Layla hung her head, "Well…"

"You know he's married?"

Her head shot up, "To Keil? No, he and Keil were never married."

"Don't you know about Sara?" Marlena asked.

"Sara?" Layla pursed her lips. 

"Yes…Sean's wife?" It then dawned on Marlena that Sean never told Layla about Sara. Alarmed, she shot Kenyon a doubtful look. "You don't know Sara, do you? You know Evie, right?"

"Evie? Yes. I thought she was Sean and Keil's daughter." 

"No, Sean and Sara." 

"Oh…"

"Layla," Marlena said calmly, "I think you better start from the beginning."

"Well, I've been working for Sean for nearly four years, as I said before," Layla sighed, "and our affair has been going on for nearly two. It's just so _easy_ to be to be with him, where Keil can walk in at any given moment. But she very rarely comes into the office and she's almost never home—she's always shopping. But I organize Sean's schedule daily."

"So, you can confirm Sean's alibi?" Kenyon pursed his lips.

"If I have to."

"Sean is a suspect in a serious murder investigation, Layla," Marlena explained. "So if you could recall…"

"Murder?" Layla put her hand to her mouth. "Sean wouldn't…he couldn't…_why_?" 

"We're trying to figure that out. But meanwhile, we can't go any farther on his case if we don't have you confirm his alibi. Now, October ninth?" 

"October ninth. I came at seven-thirty in the morning. I immediately went to his office where he told me that he was going to Las Vegas to see an associate, Gil Grissom, and I was to cancel all his appointments until five PM. So I did."

"Gil Grissom?" Kenyon repeated.

"Yes…you know him? Sean didn't say all that much about him."

Marlena blinked a few times in disbelief. "Layla," she said, "Gil Grissom was my boss. He was the one who was murdered."

Layla's face fell, "Really?" 

"I wouldn't lie."

"Oh God…now I feel awful."

"Why? You didn't do anything."

"If I hadn't cleared Sean's appointments…"

"Never mind about that, Layla. It's over and done with; it's not your fault. Now, when did Sean say he was leaving to see Mr. Grissom?"

"Eight. He left exactly at eight, gave me a _ton_ of things to do _and_ told me to 'be nice' to Keil _and_ to make reservations for him and Keil at Stepping Stones. He also left me with a list of people to call to cancel and reschedule appointments. My ear was ringing by the end of the day from people yelling at me like it was _my _fault Sean didn't want to see them. Then he left, carrying his boots."

"Wait…He _carried_ his boots?"

"Yeah, they're this weird, expensive Italian brand that he loves. It's very rare that he's seen with out them. I think they're ugly as sin, but I'd never say that to his face," Layla gave a nervous laugh. "Keil left the house around a quarter to ten to go shopping with her sister Kerry. I didn't see either of them until about four-thirty. Sean or Keil that is."

"What happened at four thirty?"

"Sean and Keil came back home and then they left to pick up Evie and came back a few hours later. While they were out, I left to go get myself something to eat at Starbuck's and I was back before they were. Sean had me order in dinner for them and I left at nine."

Kenyon nodded. 

"Well," Marlena sighed, standing up. "That's really all we need."

Somewhat frightened, Layla rose slowly as if on her way to execution. Kenyon was not far behind.

"You won't tell anyone about Sean and me?" Layla asked in almost a whisper.

"That depends," Marlena said. 

"On what?" 

Marlena screwed up her mouth to the side of her face. "I'll let you know when I find out. In the meantime, you've been _very_ helpful."

When Marlena got back into her car, she sat in silence before sticking her key into the ignition. 

"Marlena?" Kenyon was leaning against her car. 

"What?" 

"What do you think?"

"We got nothing on Sean. Not yet. He already confessed to being at Grissom's place of residence with a steel baseball bat. You were there."

"Yep." 

"But there's nothing to go by. Grissom died of strychnine poisoning, not blunt force trauma. That would accredit Sean to the murder, indubitably."

"So?" Kenyon folded his arms across his chest.

"Unless we find strychnine at the Gentileschi place, we're gonna have to try a different route. I'm suppost to meet Breeze there with a warrant so now I gotta go back to HQ and wait for it."

"Okay. See you later, then?"

"Sure."

Kenyon flashed Marlena a smile, put on his sunglasses and went back to his car. Sighing, Marlena started up the car and turned up the radio. The first song that played was the last one Marlena felt like hearing at the moment:

"I make the best of the situation before I finally go insane…please don't say you'll never find your way and tell me all my love's in play…Layla, you got me on my knees…Layla, I'm beggin' ya darlin' please, Layla…darlin' won't you ease my worried mind? Layla…you got me on my knees…Layla, Layla…"


	11. The House of Lomi

Breeze popped a piece of Big Red into her rosebud mouth and leaned against the CSI Tahoe, waiting for Detective Jim Brass at the end of the long driveway of Sean Gentileschi's mansion, the House of Lomi. She had not turned the car off and had the radio on, tuned to her favorite rock station. She put on her pink-tinted J-Lo sunglasses and hummed to "Paradise By The Dashboard Light". Down the street she could be mistaken for a high schooler and as she was leaning against the Tahoe in her hip-huggers and rhinestone-appliquéd Santana baby tee, a car-full of teenaged boys had slowed down and honked and whistled. She lowered her sunglasses and winked but when she didn't acknowledge them any further, they drove off.

As she used a few minutes to relax before she had to actually work, she decided it was more than nice of Brass to take the time to take the hour drive and come to Indian Springs and get Sean Gentileschi's alibi from his girlfriend, Keil Anson, when he could be doing bigger and better things. 

"Gil was a good friend of mine," he had said over the phone when Breeze called him earlier. "I'd like to help in any way possible." 

Breeze played with her gum and took out her cell phone, a little gift she bought herself with her first CSI paycheck, along with the camera attachment. Greg had helped her download a handful of games on it and managed to play a few rounds of virtual bowling before Brass's Taurus pulled up.

"Hey there, Jim," she greeted him, turning her cell off. "'Bout time."

"Had to finish some damn paperwork," Brass puffed, fixing his tie as he slammed closed the door of the Taurus. 

"No big. I kept myself occupied," Breeze gave a half-smile. 

Brass approached Breeze, who opened the driver's side door of the Tahoe and turned the key to shut the vehicle down.

"Who are we checking out again?" he asked. Being somewhat of the head detective of CSI, he obviously knew everything about the Grissom case. 

"Keil Anson," Breeze reminded him. She clipped her cell to her hip-hugger jeans. "Current girlfriend of Sean Gentileschi."

"Who's the former husband of Sara Sidle."

"You are correct, sir." 

The pair began walking up the tree-lined driveway to the House of Lomi, an extremely large house that looked like it was a small hotel. 

Breeze liked working with Brass, whom she imagined was once a devastatingly handsome man in his prime. He reminded her of her father, minus the long hippie hair her father was known for. Brass in return liked Breeze Hamelin, who reminded him of his daughter Ellie, but more serious and much less reckless. In fact, he wished Ellie was more like Breeze. 

When they reached the front gallery, both were somewhat out of breath. 

"Quite a workout, huh?" Breeze panted. 

"A long driveway like that is used for only one thing," Brass said. "To keep out people who don't belong."

Breeze pursed her lips before ringing the doorbell of the House of Lomi. It was an extremely large house, with a Romanesque front; columns made of glass blocks; large stained-glass windows depicting Roman gods and goddesses frolicking in gardens splayed a colorful tie-die pattern on the white granite steps and front gallery. The Nevada sun was flaming hot and high in the sky, burning through Breeze's sunglasses. She reached into her pocket, pulled out a tissue and spit her gum into it. She crumpled the tissue in her hand and stuffed it into her pocket. Brass had a private smile with himself. Then she rang the bell, and it played _Minuet in G_. They were expecting to be greeted by a maid or butler. When the door opened, they got a little surprise: it was Keil herself. 

Keil Anson was, truthfully, thirty-five years old—almost as old as Sara—but she looked much younger, possibly younger than Breeze, who was twenty-six. Her hair was streaked in several shades of blonde and brown, so telling which was her true color was impossible. It was pulled back from her face with a white headband. Her hazel eyes were round and large like a deer in headlights. She has a true hourglass shape with large pillowy breasts and swingy hips and a waist so small that one could put their arms all the way around it. Her white haltered sundress emphasized her shape and her deep tan and her white high-heeled sandals were strapped tightly on her small feet. 

"Can I help you?" she asked in a breathy voice with a hint of a New York accent when she opened the door of the mansion. 

"Ms. Keil Anson?" Breeze began, "My name is Breeze Hamelin of the Las Vegas Criminalistics Bureau and this is Detective Jim Brass of the Las Vegas PD. I just need to ask you a few questions regarding the whereabouts of Sean Gentileschi."

"That's my boyfriend," Keil flashed a smile so bright Breeze was almost blinded. 

"I know…I'm from the Crime Lab? In Las Vegas?…" Breeze flashed her ID. Brass showed his badge.

"Oh," Keil's face fell with realization, "Oh."

"May we come in?" 

Keil opened the door a little wider and Brass and Breeze stepped into Sean Gentileschi's Indian Springs mansion. He was obviously a fan of _objects d'art_—glass, porcelain and ceramic knickknacks took up almost every flat surface. Photographs were few, each one framed in gold or silver. Breeze saw that nearly all were of Evie, Sean and Sara's daughter. The décor of the living room in which the two women were standing was strict: tailored, white and beige with mahogany accents. A white marble fountain stood to the right of the front door. The room was ridiculously large for two people. Breeze's entire apartment could fit into it. 

"Your home…it's really…big, I mean, nice," was all Breeze could say. Brass just quietly surveyed everything.

"Thank you. Actually, it's not really mine. It's Sean's," Keil replied, closing the front door behind her. "Would you like to sit down?"

"Yes, please. Thank you," Breeze took off her sunglasses. Keil led them into the sunken living room, down two steps, and perched on a beige loveseat. 

"I'll stand, thank you," Brass said, positioning himself behind the couch.

"So…Breeze…I love your name. Is it your _real_ name?" Keil asked innocently.

Breeze sat diagonal from her on the couch. She got this a lot. "Yes. Is Keil _your_ real name?"

Brass coughed to hide a chuckle and Keil giggled, obviously missing the insult, and clicked off the large-screen television that was showing a re-run of _Port Charles_ and turned to face Brass and Breeze.

"So, what's this about my boyfriend?" she asked, cocking her head. 

"I just need to know where he was on October ninth?" Breeze asked

"The ninth?" Keil frowned. "That was a few days ago."

"Yes…I know."

Keil sighed, "I'm not too great at remembering dates."

"You're gonna have to try," Breeze coaxed. 

"Did Sean tell you that he's a suspect in a murder investigation?" Brass asked.

Keil's expression told Brass that he hadn't. Her richly tanned complexion turned the color of her dress. "He told me he had to go to Las Vegas…something that has to do with his wife…what's her name again? Sandra?"

"Sara," Breeze corrected

"Oh, right. Yeah, he said he was going in for a questioning and no, he didn't tell me for what. Sean's very cut-and-dry when it comes to his wife, so as soon as she was mentioned I knew I wasn't gonna get a lot of information from him."

"When you say _wife_…do you mean ex-wife?"

"No. He and Sandra never formally split-up, or at least, that's what Layla told me."

"Sara," Brass corrected. 

"No, _Layla_. She's Sean's secretary."

"What do you mean they 'never formally split-up'?" Breeze asked, confused now.

"That's what I mean. Sean just up and left, they didn't file for divorce or anything," Keil said, as innocent as a second-grader, toying with a piece of her hair. 

"So Sean is still married to Sara?" Breeze asked, a bit confused.

Keil shrugged, "I guess so."

Breeze racked her brain and then realized that Keil was right. Every time Sara spoke about Sean—which was rare—the word _divorce_ was never once mentioned. "Do you know why Sean left Sara?"

"Nope," Keil shook her head. "Like I said, cut-and-dry."

"Hm." Breeze sighed, "I know you said you were bad with dates, Keil, but I'm practically begging you to remember…where was Sean on October ninth? Between, say, seven AM and nine PM?"

Keil paused, crinkling her brow, "Um…okay, let's see…seven o'clock, he was here, of course. We had breakfast together. His secretary Layla arrived around seven-thirty. I remember that 'cause I was still watching the news in my pajamas. I never dress before nine. Well, I guess around eight, Sean left the office. He told me he had to do some 'business abroad', which, in his language, means he's going to Eve's Garden—that's his spa, you know."

"I know," Breeze saw Brass take a pad and pen out of the inside pocket of his sports coat and begin to jot everything down. "Was he carrying anything? When he left?"

Keil's eyes squinted in thought, "A briefcase. _His_ briefcase…camel tooled leather with his monogram engraved on it. _I_ got him that," she added proudly.

"Uh-huh…anything else?"_ She may suck with dates but the girl knows her accessories. _

"I don't think so. Oh! He was carrying his boots!"

"Boots?" Brass piped up.

Keil rolled her eyes. "Those damn boots of his, the Italian what's-its. Aquilas. They drive me _crazy_. He wears them everywhere but in his own home. Would you believe," Keil laughed, "he wore those damned things to my sister's wedding? I mean, tux and all! I told him to keep his feet under the table during the reception; I was so embarrassed!" 

"Did he say anything else to you about where he was going?" Brass asked.

"Just the 'business abroad' spiel…he always tells me if I need anything I was to ask Layla and then he _promised_ to meet me at Stepping Stones for lunch, which he did."

"What time?"

"Did he meet me for lunch? Ten after eleven. No…not ten. That's when _I_ got there. No, Sean came at eleven-twenty."

"Where did he go after lunch?"

"Back to his office here, I guess. That's what he told me. I went shopping with Kerry, that's my sister. But around four, Sean and I went to pick up Evie."

"Evie?" Breeze jumped in.

"Sean's daughter," Keil said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "That's her in the picture here." She pointed to a nearby photo in a gilded frame. It was a Christmas portrait. Evie was set in front of a Christmas tree wearing a long, burgundy velvet dress with puffy sleeves and a frilly lace collar, looking quite angelic. 

"Yes, I've seen her. I work with her mother."

"Oh. Well, we picked up Evie around four, brought her back here. She slept over, like she usually does. She has her own bedroom here and everything. Sean just absolutely _lavishes_ gifts on her. Anyway, Evie stayed overnight and then her mother picked her up around eight. That's it."

"You stayed in all night?" 

"Yes. Well, Sean and Layla were in the office and I stayed with Evie. I just _adore_ her, so it's not like I minded. We played with dolls and things. While I stayed with Evie, Sean saw two clients and then Layla left around nine, like always. Then we had dinner, put Evie to bed and watched TV. We went to bed around eleven."

__

Brass noted everything Keil said. Breeze turned to him and he nodded. Breeze stood, as did Keil. 

Breeze held out her hand and Keil took it, "Thank you, Keil. You've been _very_ helpful."


	12. Love?

Sasha wanted to be extra-careful about what he found in Grissom's apartment, so as he sat in the Tahoe, thinking about what he was gonna do next, he decided he was going to slap on the latex gloves, go back up to the apartment and do a double-check. 

Again, he went over everything, shaking out clothes, rifling through drawers and scouring the floors and even daring to put his hand in the tarantula cage. When he tried, one of the large spiders lunged for him. He got freaked and pulled his hand out quickly. 

"Jeez," he groaned. "I friggin' hate spiders."

He found a pair of shoes that matched the description of the Avias that Breeze had seen Grissom wearing as recently as two weeks ago and bagged them for comparison. 

While re-searching the drawers, Sasha accidentally knocked the wood out of the back of Grissom's sock drawer. Or, he thought he did. 

The wood moved akimbo, smacking Sasha in the back of the hand. Frantically, he tried to put it back together by taking the entire piece off…and it was then he discovered it was a fake backing. 

It was in an awkward horseshoe shape, like an uppercase "E" with the middle line missing and made to fit inside the drawer by just sliding it in like a puzzle piece. It left about three inches of extra space. But for what? Obviously, to hide something. It was popularly known that Grissom was a very private man, due to the fact nobody but a few knew about his otosclerosis or his supposed OCD, but this was getting to be ridiculous. 

Sasha had never seen anything like this before and it reminded him of the false bookcases people used in the 1800's to hide runaway slaves. 

Now confused, Sasha dropped the piece to the floor and discovered what Grissom had supposedly wanted to hide using this false woodwork. 

Shining his flashlight, he withdrew a small red velvet box from the way, way back of the drawer. Sasha put the flashlight in his pocket and opened the box. Inside, nestled on white silk, was a ring. 

It was a plain gold band with a small opal in the center. It was real, both the gold and the stone. Sasha could tell by the way the opal shined in the dimness and the way it slightly changed colors and the stamp on the back of the ring: 28 karat gold. Carefully, he took the ring from the box and examined it. There was something written inside that Sasha had to shine his flashlight on to read.

Carefully engraved were the words, "I'll Wait For You If You Wait For Me."

Nothing else. No name. Nothing but the ring and the inscription. 

Perhaps whoever had killed Grissom didn't want to wait.

Greg stared at the thong that Sasha placed before him and burst out laughing. 

"Yeah…yeah, I know," Sasha shook his head. 

"Oh…my…God!" Greg exclaimed between bouts of laughter. "You have great taste, Sasha." 

"You should know, Greg, I got them from your underwear drawer," Sasha picked up on of Greg's surfing magazines and waited for him to calm down. 

After Greg's laughter had died down, he pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and took the thong from the bag. 

"So what am I looking for?" he asked, holding the panties out and examining them with a naked eye. 

"Anything and everything. Preferably DNA."

"Ah. That's what I do best," Greg said. 

"Test it against the DNA of our suspects, please. But we think it's Lady Heather's. Do we have her in the CODIS?" 

"Sure, sure. From the last case she was involved in. Croix Richards, I think. Ah, girls' underwear brings be back to high school. Hm. I can just add this to the pile of stuff you guys gave me yesterday, from the maid. What's-her-name."

"Solange Tanguy."

"Yeah. You guys wanted me to test for strychnine, _correcto_?" 

"No, Greg. Test for lollipops and gumdrops," Sasha said sarcastically. "You didn't test them yet?"

"Well," Greg shifted uneasily. "Catherine wanted me—"

"You always do what Catherine says?" 

"He should," piped up another voice. 

Sasha winced and turned. Catherine Willows was standing in the doorway, hands on her hips.

"Good evening, Ms. Willows," Sasha said in his best suck-up voice.

Catherine smirked, "Save it, Zarek. When I want my ass kissed, I'll ask." She strutted over to Greg's desk, rifled through it and plucked out a few choice sheets of paper and then left. 

"Would that be with or without lipstick?" Sasha said under his breath after she was gone and out of earshot.

"She's been in a bad mood lately," Greg said delicately. 

"I don't blame her," Sasha went over to Greg's stereo. "What'cha got in there today?" 

"Ah," Greg leaned over, pushed the play button and the rock music emitted. "A little bit of everything good, my friend. Got a little Ozzy, a little Pink Floyd, some Jim Morrison."

"Mr. Mojo Risin is always good. _Au contraire_, _you_ have good taste."

Greg laughed. There was a beat of silence before he spoke up again. "Are you going to the memorial service?"

It was recently announced that Gil Grissom's memorial service would take place that Saturday. It was an open invitation to everyone in the bureau who wanted to pay their respects. 

Sasha heaved a great sigh. "Wish I could. It's my parents' fortieth anniversary. I have to take the three-and-a-half hour drive to Pioche for this monster party my sister is throwing for them at a Holiday Inn. I promised Alex I'd take the time off months ago."

"You always listen to your sister?"

"No. But Alex is ten years older than me…she'd beat me to a pulp if I backpedaled."

Greg glanced up at six-foot-four Sasha leaning against the filing cabinet and wondered how tall Alex was if she could beat him to a pulp.

"You wouldn't know if Grissom was involved with anyone, would you, Greg?" Sasha asked.

"I know he was bangin' Sara Sidle."

"Thank you Greg. Didn't need to hear that." Sasha paused. "How'd you find out…?"

"News travels fast 'round here," Greg didn't look up as he took a scraping from the thong panties. "Can't believe Sara would choose Grissom over me."

"You were after Sara?"

"For several years. Up until she started with Hank…then Sean. Then I got with Casey, Laurie and Regina and well, we went our separate ways. You know how it goes."

"Yup. Well," Sasha clapped his hands together. "I gotta get some stuff to evidence. Later."

"Later." 

Sasha left Greg's lab and took the plastic bag containing the ring out of his pocket. 

"Hi, Sasha," said a small voice.

Sasha looked up and smiled. "Sara. Hi."

Sara Sidle, paler than usual, had a little less bounce in her step. She was walking slowly, like on hot coals. She was somewhat sallow, especially the dim light of the CSI HQ hallway. 

"What's up?"

"I'm on my way to evidence. Got some great stuff that's pointing us closer and closer to who iced Grissom."

Sara swallowed hard and nodded. "Good. Good. You do that."

"You okay, Sara?" 

"Um, yeah," she sighed. "Just an onset of a stomach flu, I think. I hope not. If I'm sick then I'll have to call Sean and have him take Evie."

"Oh. I'm sorry to hear that."

"Yeah," Sara offered a weak smile. "So am I. What have you got there?" She cocked her head to get a look at the ring Sasha was still holding up.

"Oh. A ring," Sasha said. "Found it in Grissom's bedroom."

"May I?" 

"Oh…sure," he handed the bag to Sara, who knew enough not to take it out of its bag. 

"Oooh…it's an opal," she breathed. "I love opals. It's beautiful." She turned it around in it's bag. "Oh, Sasha…the gold is scratched."

"It's not scratched. It's engraved." 

"What's it say? You got your flashlight?"

"Yeah," he pulled his Pen-Lite from his pocket and handed it to her. 

She squinted as she read the engraving. Then she swallowed hard again and breathed thinly, "Excuse me, Sasha." She handed the flashlight and the ring back to Sasha covered her mouth with one hand, and hurried off in the opposite direction. 

Sasha couldn't help but agree with her actions. Love made _him_ ill, too.


	13. The Prime of His Life

A/N: I know you guys are pissed because I killed Grissom but I thrive on reviews and when you don't leave me any, it hurts. It really does. Please find it in your hearts to help a first-time CSI writer continue on!

Marlena checked her messages on her cell phone, which she had turned off during Layla Feldman's interview. There were three: one from her mother, saying:  


"Mara, it's your mommy. Dinner at my house tonight, whether you like it or not. _Seven o'clock sharp_, missy scientist. Tah-tah, darling."

In the course of less than a minute, her mother had called her three named she despised. Mara had been her nickname since her little sister, just learning to talk, had mispronounced her true name and "missy scientist" was one her father had given her at the age of thirteen. Darling she never liked. She had dumped a past boyfriend because he insisted on calling her darling, like he was on _Hart to Hart_ or something.

The next was from Breeze. She sounded tired. 

"I'm waiting outside the castle of Gentileschi for your call about the warrant. Hit me back before I die of heatstroke." 

The warrant. Marlena quickly checked her third message and with a sigh of relief, it was the judge. The warrant was granted and they were free to search for strychnine at the Gentileschi place. 

Marlena quickly dialed Breeze's cell and prepared to tell her partner that they were going to have a long night.

Brass had left. Breeze was sitting in the Tahoe in the back, the hatch up, playing Snood on her cell phone, avoiding the heat. Her cell all of a sudden vibrated and rang her favorite ring tone she had Greg download for her: the Austin Powers theme song. She quickly exited Snood, sacrificing her chance at a new high score.

"Hamelin," she said as she answered. 

"Hey, bacon in the sun. I got the warrant."

"I hope you mean the paper and _not_ the eighties hair band."

"It was as easy as cherry pie," Marlena said. "I'll be over there as soon as I can. Sean Gentileschi doesn't finish work till what, eight? Nine? I promise I'll try to make the drive as fast as my Dodge will go. My mother wants me over for dinner."

"Yikes. Reagan family get-together."

"No kidding. So, relax, head back to HQ and I'll give you a call when Fright Fest is over. Get yourself out of the heat, get some dinner…I know I will."

"Gotcha. You want me to pick up the warrant anywhere?" 

"Catherine should have it. That would be great, Breeze. Thanks a lot."

"No, Marlena, thank you," Breeze said in her sickly sweet voice used for suspects, "you've been _very_ helpful."

Marlena got her broad shoulders, thick blonde hair and quick wit from her father Roosevelt Reagan, known as Roo to family and friends. But her stubborn curls, dark brown eyes and well-toned calves were from her mother Jane, called Janey. Marlena was not slow to admit that she wished she'd gotten her parents' "better" qualities, such as her father's elegant hands and crystal-clear blue eyes or her mother's culinary talent and melodic voice. Those features and others she had always considered "better" were peppered between her younger sister Marilyn and her older brother Mark. 

Marlena tried to sneak into her parents house in Paradise, Nevada a little after seven-twenty, more than unfashionably late for her mother's taste. But though she impressed herself with her stealth entrance, she was quickly thwarted by her three mischievous nephews who were running amok about the house. 

"AUNT MARA!" exclaimed thee simultaneous voices. Immediately Marlena was bombarded by three simultaneous hugging boys: her nephews Riley, Dominic and Shannon. 

"Ow! You guys—Riley, not so hard—totally ruined my chances of making a quiet entrance," Marlena smiled. "C'mon I was trying to make a quick getaway."

"Will you play soccer with us, Aunt Mara?" Shannon, age ten, asked.

"If I have time," she promised. "I might have to leave early." 

"You _always_ say that," pouted a frowning six-year-old Dominic.

"So have Katresa play," Marlena replied, referring to her six-year-old niece and the sister of Riley and Shannon. 

"No," Riley, an eight year old who knew what he wanted, said firmly. "No girls allowed."

"What am I, a duck?"

"Marlena!" exclaimed a new voice, somewhat exasperated. Jane Reagan, her mother, came into the foyer scowling. 

"Hi, Mom," Marlena greeted as she unwound Dominic from her waist. 

"Late again. I knew you would come late, no matter what time I said."

"I got caught up with a very important investigation—"

"More important than your family?"

"…I had to wait for a warrant to come through and—"

"Ah, well that can't be helped," Jane sighed, feigning interest. "Come on, everyone's outside. And you three," Jane turned to her three impish grandsons, "were told to _stay_ outside!"

"Aw Gram," frowned Shannon. "We jus' heard a car pull up and we was making sure it wasn't robbers."

"Well, it wasn't. It's Aunt Mara, so now you can go back out. C'mon squirts…Gramps is setting up croquet." 

"Croquet bites," mumbled Shannon as he stomped out of the foyer.

"Yeah, croquet bites," repeated Dominic.

"Bites," echoed Riley. 

"I don't know how Julie handles those boys," Jane shook her head in sympathy for her daughter in law, mother of Riley, Shannon and Katresa. "Well, Marlena, let's go. Now that you're here, Dad can put the steak on the grill."

"Oh, good. I'm _starved_. I've been working nonstop for more than forty-eight hours with nothing more than Red Bull and burritos from In-and-Out."

"Tsk," Jane sighed. "Nasty stuff. Nothing even remotely healthy?"

"Does coffee count?"

"Oh, Marlena…"

"But coffee's healthy! It's a bean!" she protested as she followed her mother to the backyard. 

"Look who's here!" Jane exclaimed as she opened the sliding door to the rear patio for Marlena. "Fresh off the work line!"

"Well, not that fresh," Marlena corrected with a small yawn.

The boys were playing on the giant swing-set Roo had constructed for them three years ago. Katresa, Marlena's oldest niece, was quietly relaxing with a book on a picnic blanket. 

The first one to greet her was her brother. 

"Hey there, little sister," Mark got up from his lawn chair and hugged Marlena closely. He was tall, but not as tall as Sasha, with dark hair that he kept long. It had grown into an unruly feathered-like mane. "Want a beer? Julie and I brought a few cases of Rolling Rock."

"Sure," Marlena smiled. "Cold, right?"

"But of course," Mark returned the grin. "Jules?"

Julie, Mark's wife, who had been sitting on a plainchant with sunglasses over her pretty gray eyes and a Pirates baseball cap over her red hair, reached into the cooler beside her and pulled out the friendly green-tinted bottle of beer. "How are you, Marlena?" 

"Better now," Marlena laughed as she leaned over to hug Julie and take the bottle. 

Mark and Julie owned a bar in North Las Vegas that they bought twelve years ago as the Electric Dolphin. It was known for being a sleazy dump, but a year and a half of hard work, they had de-sleazed it and cleaned it up real nice, transforming it into a classy bar and renaming it Galileo's Tavern. It was considered very posh now, not at all like the Electric Dolphin's former reputation. Mark, Julie and the kids lived in the one-story house adjoining the bar that had once been, for no particular reason, a chiropractor's.

"Let me guess," said Marlena's sister Marilyn from a picnic bench. "It's the first thing you've had that isn't coffee in at least a year." She was smiling, her lap holding her two-year-old daughter Janelle and her right hand holing a beer.

Marlena couldn't help but laugh, "You're almost right. Where's Ryan?" 

"He went out for ice," Marilyn made a face. "Mom still hasn't fixed her machine. How did my husband become the family gopher?" 

"Just lucky I guess," Marlena giggled as she kissed her sister on the cheek, getting a whiff of her lilac perfume.

Marilyn was known for being the prettiest child in the Reagan family and lived up as a namesake to Miss Monroe. She was blond, like Marlena, but her coloring was lighter and her curls were softer: less harsh and wavier. She was the only child that had gotten Roo's coveted blue eyes by a stroke of luck. She was also the only one who had a tattoo: a small strawberry just above her right ankle. She and her husband Ryan, along being the parents of Dominic and Janelle, held interesting careers.

Marilyn, a talented dancer from a very young age, was a choreographer. She'd worked with some very famous musicians in the past and was right now concentrating on training new recruits for another teenaged pop group. Such a dedicated performer was she that she worked and danced while she was pregnant with both her children until her third trimester. 

Ryan was a make-up artist, but concentrated mostly on creature features and special effects, like the illusion of gouged-out eyeballs and crossing ethnic barriers. Medical oddities were his favorite—Marlena would bring him her medical books from her forensics classes. Ryan was also quite skilled in medieval make=up and a lot of his work was featured in Shakespearean productions. The kids, especially Dominic, got a kick out of all the scary and funny things their dad could do on Halloween, around which time it was not unusual to open the refrigerator and find a bucket of homemade blood in there.

"How've you been?" Marlena asked, sitting across from her sister, straddling the picnic bench. 

"Tired," sighed Marilyn. "But I guess I have nothing to complain about. You're a graveyard shifter."

"Yeah, but you dance eight hours a day _and_ have two kids. I think it's safe to say that you have plenty to complain about."

"You're both wrong," laughed the voice of their father. "I have the most to complain about—I live with your mother!" 

Marlena, Mark and Marilyn laughed while Jane groaned. 

"Dad, you're awful!" Marlena kissed her dad in greeting on the cheek.

"No, _you're_ awful, missy scientist," Roo playfully poked Marlena on her sides. "You don't come around enough."

"And when she does come around," Jane butted in, "she's _late_!"

"A bad habit I picked up from Sara, I guess," Marlena shrugged. 

"Sara who?"

"Oh…Sidle. Sara Sidle. I work with her in the graveyard shift? I was tailing her when I was a rookie?"

"Is she the brunette with the teeth?" Mark asked. 

Annoyed, Marlena replied, "Why is it whenever I bring up Sara, someone mentions the gap in her teeth? It's not all that noticeable."

"It's just a memorable trait," Jane said, carrying a bowl of salad to the picnic table, in a voice that sounded as if one sentence explained everything. "Like your sister and her awful tattoo."

Marilyn frowned, "Hey. If my tattoo was of a naked woman saying 'lick me' then it would be awful."

"Marilyn!" 

"Hey, Marlena," Roo said quickly. "I heard from my friend Tom that your boss passed away."

There was a silence around the yard. Even the neighbor's dog had stopped barking. 

"I didn't hear that," Jane said softly.

"Was he old?" Julie asked.

"No," Marlena said. "I think in his early fifties. His age was always hard to place."

"Heart attack? Stroke?" Mark asked.

"We don't know."

"You don't know?"

"I'm investigating his case…I'm not really at liberty to discuss it…"

Marilyn sighed, "I don't know what I'd do without Amy. She gets me all my gigs. Since forever."

"Well, Grissom's job has been filled right away. It was too important of a position to be empty."

"Already?" Roo inquired. "So soon?"

"As soon as word got out, the promoted Catherine Willows. She was Grissom's second-in-command, so it was only natural…"

"That poor man," sighed Jane. "So you don't know what killed him?"

"We have a pretty good idea."

"That's a shame," Roo shook his head. "Cut down in the prime of his life."

Marlena's cell phone rang. Jane gave her an icy stare but Marlena ignored it. She excused herself from the table and answered it with a business like, "Reagan."

"Marlena, I've been trying to reach you for an hour!" Sasha's irritated voice came out harsh and tired. 

"I'm at dinner with my family."

"Peachy keen, jelly bean. I have big, big evidence. You should come down here. Breeze already is."

"Now?"

"I think it might lead to Grissom's murderer's motive."

Marlena looked over her shoulder. Her family was sitting around the picnic table. The smell of steak grilling was in the air and there was a gentle buzz of the bug zapper. It was very peaceful. But she heaved a great sigh and said firmly to Sasha, "I'll be right there."


	14. The Rundown

"What is it, an opal?" 

"Yup."

Marlena held the ring Sasha had found underneath a bright light, "'I'll Wait For You If You Wait For Me', huh? You think this is really motive?" 

"Listen, the ring is obviously for a woman," Sasha said, pacing, trying desperately to explain his theory. "I think…I think it may be for Sara."

Marlena nearly dropped the ring. "Sara?!"

"He was already bangin' her," Sasha explained, using Greg's crude wording. "Listen, Sean knew he wasn't Sara's daughter's father, right? Maybe…maybe Grissom is. Maybe Sara got tired of waiting for him."

"So she kills him?" Marlena said. "Sash, I have this thing called the sun complex. Would you like to hear it?"

"I have a feeling you're going to tell me anyway…"

"Everybody loves the sun, right? It gives us light, it gives us ever-clean solar energy, it gives us trees, therefore giving us oxygen."

"Yeah, so?"

"So, you might love the sun so much, you might wanna take a nice long look. It's pretty until it starts to burn your retinas. Before you know it, you're blinded for life."

"I'm still not following."

"Well, when a theory is paper-thin, there is a feverish attempt to strengthen it with bits of irrelevant information. A researcher will scout out tiny details in every bit of text, and each detail is stretched until they become farfetched."

"In other words, you think I need to rethink my theory?"

Marlena touched her forefinger to her nose.

All of a sudden, Breeze skidded into the room like an excited puppy. Her face was flushed and was breathless as she spoke, "Hey guys! Greg got some of our results back. The maid's clothes, only there were not enough traces of strychnine to convict her. I think it's like you said she said: it was only on her hands from sprinkling it on her hands. I helped him test the lip prints. They belong to Grissom, Sara and Lady Heather. And the thong?…Lady Heather's!"

Marlena was overwhelmed. "Wow. Greg did all that?"

"He figured he owed us a favor," Breeze smirked. "I also promised to suck him off if he did it right then and there."

"Really?" Sasha smiled. 

"No."

Sasha looked slightly disappointed. Marlena ignored her partners' perverse minds.

"Which cup was Lady Heather's?" 

"The one with the lipstick, naturally. I looked up the ingredients and it matches to a certain brand and color: Valiant Burgundy by the Colour Institute."

"Valiant Burgundy?" Sasha smirked. "Who _names_ this stuff? I'd like to have a job where all I have to do is think up of frou-frou names for cosmetics."

"Anyway, I was there when the results were printed. They all match. Not only that but they, ah…stains? On the thong? They were fresh, I mean, new, I mean—"

"So what does this mean?" Sasha turned to Marlena. 

"It places Lady Heather at the scene of the crime." 

"Good. Real good."

"So, let's do a rundown."

The three settled down into chairs in the same board room Grissom used to speak to his team to. The SmartBoard was in the room, set up hooked up to the computer. Marlena set it up to the programs of her choosing and stood in front of it like a teacher about to give a long lecture two her students. She loved the SmartBoard, it was one of her favorite tools. It was a large screen that was hooked up to a computer. It displayed whatever was on the computer screen onto the SmartBoard. There were four pointers, each a designated color. You could use the pointers or your finger to draw red, green, black or blue lines on the board and then erase them by pressing a special button on the side. 

"Did you hear they already moved someone to Grissom's team?" Breeze asked. "With Grissom gone and Catherine the new supervisor, they called someone in already."

"I saw him," Sasha said. "What's his name, Carcass?" 

"Campus," Breeze corrected. "Richard Campus."

"Whatever. I thought we were doing a rundown."

"We are. Breeze? Shut up," Marlena said. "Okay. So we have how many suspects?"

"We had four, now we have three," Breeze said. "We've eliminated Solange Tanguy, due to not enough evidence and lack of motive." 

"Good," Marlena said, as if really speaking to a student. She went to the smart board, pulled up photographs of Lady Heather, Solange, Sara and Sean. She picked up the red marker and with her finger drew an X through Solange's picture, excluding her from the lineup. "We only found strychnine with Solange, however. Which is why Breeze and I are going to the Gentileschi home to do a search."

"Right."

"Okay. The other suspects are, in no particular order, Sean Burgess Gentileschi, Sara Lucille Sidle and Heather Jeanne Paruvski. We'll eventually have to search the homes of Sara and Lady Heather, since the lip prints and footprints place them at the scene of the crime."

"Thank God Solange found the body before she cleaned Grissom's house," Sasha said. "Or else we would have been fucked." 

"No kidding," Breeze murmured.

"We're looking for strychnine or anything suspicious pertaining to the case," Marlena reminded them, as if they needed reminding. "That'll be all for the night. Will I be seeing either of you at the memorial service?"

Breeze nodded but Sasha didn't.

"It's Vlad and Tovah's anniversary," Sasha said. "Alex told me to be there or die. I promised her a month ago."

"Well, we'll tell you how it went," Breeze said. "C'mon Marlena. Let's go back to the House of Lomi."


	15. Return to the House of Lomi

Breeze wasn't exaggerating about anything when Marlena pulled up at the bottom of the driveway that led up to the House of Lomi, Sean Gentileschi's estate. Breeze found it more impressive in the fading dusk, all illuminated from within. 

The stained-glass windows; the ornate glass-block columns; the pearly white granite gallery all glimmered as the pair walked up the long driveway—Breeze's second workout for the day. Breeze was happy that she had no use for her sunglasses this time of day but she felt once she stepped inside the house, she might need to whip them out. Even in the distance she could see an extremely large, ornate crystal chandelier lit up in one of the larger windows, making the mansion look like an extremely elaborate lighthouse. 

"This is when you know you have way too much money," Marlena said. "You spend your money on useless décor shit."

"Tell that to Bill Gates. The guy has so much money he could buy every baseball team in the league," Breeze smiled, "and make them all wear dresses."

Marlena winced. A Yankee fan, she didn't want to picture Derek Jeter in an evening dress. Although white satin would set off his burnt caramel skin…

Breeze rang the doorbell unenthusiastically and Marlena nodded, impressed at the _Minuet in G_ chimes. 

"I bet I can download that for my Nokia," she joked. 

This time, Keil was nowhere in sight. Breeze again was expecting the maid or butler but when Sean himself opened the door, she just figured they didn't have one. 

"You people," he sneered instead of greeting them. "What now? I had enough of that little prick Sasha Zarek this afternoon."

"Sean Gentileschi, we're CSI's Reagan and Hamelin. We have a warrant to search the premises for strychnine," Marlena said unabashedly. 

"I know who you are," Sean replied. He glared at Breeze, "And you and some fat cop were here earlier, harassing Keil. She told me you were."

Breeze took offense to that and began to argue on Brass's part, "Captain Jim Brass and I didn't harass. Keil let us in. She could have very well slammed the door in our faces."

"Then that's what I'm doing now. I've had a very stressful two day and I'd like peace for once with out you damn law enforcement…people! Good night!" With that, Sara's ex slammed the door in their faces. 

Breeze balled up her fist and began pounding on the door. Her voice jumped with every thrash she hurled at it, "Mr. Gentileschi! If you don't let us in, the CSI will be the least of your problems! We can very easily get the authorities involved! _Mr. Gentileschi!_ _We…have…a…warrant! We…have…a court order…to search…your…home!_"

Marlena worried that tiny Breeze would break their door down, she found her voice, "Mr. Gentileschi, this search could eliminate you as a suspect in the Grissom murder case if you don't let us in. It can make or break you!" 

The door opened and this time it was Keil. Breeze had stopped hammering and in the dim porch light Marlena could see her partner's hand turning red. 

Keil had changed out of the white sundress she was wearing earlier that afternoon and was more casual. Her high-heeled sandals were replaced by bare feet and her toenails were freshly painted an electrifying purple. She wore a silk gold-colored tank top and a pair of designer jeans that looked like they were splattered with gold paint. Her wild streaky hair was pulled back in a careless French twist. A few pieces of hair were purposely loosened from the stylish hairdo, framing her face. 

"Miss Hamelin," Keil smiled falsely, her voice still breathless with the New York accent dying to come through but the sexy blitheness and naïveté was gone, her tone a little bit firmer. "I apologize for Sean. He had a bad day."

"Keil, it's very important that you let us search the house. This could get Sean out of becoming a suspect," Breeze explained calmly to the woman she's already met. "He's already being brought up on reckless endangerment and trespassing charges, for that he might only get a short jailing period or perhaps a hefty fine, if he's lucky. If he doesn't let us in, we just have even more of a suspicion that he killed Gil Grissom."

"Yeah, I get it," Keil opened the door wider. "Come on in."

The two CSI's stepped inside and Keil closed the door behind them. Marlena gaped at what she saw but Breeze had seen it before: the beige and white, the gold and silver, the marble fountain and the mahogany. Keil stepped down into the living room and turned off the television, this time showing an episode of _The OC_. By this time, Breeze had pegged her as a fluttery soap opera fanatic. 

"So what is it you're looking for again?" asked Sean's girlfriend. 

"Strychnine," Breeze replied. "It's a poison, an alkaloid extract. Commonly used to kill birds."

"In humans the symptoms are frequently confused with tetanus," Marlena added.

"Oh…is that what killed that man?" Keil knitted your brow.

"The poison doesn't kill. The asphyxia, the respiratory arrest, you suffer from it does."

Keil looked disheartened, "I've never heard of a poison like that."

"It's not used a lot anymore," Breeze explained. "It's pretty dangerous stuff. One of our suspects was using it as a rodent control agent."

"And you think my boyfriend has this…stuff in our house? Where his four-year-old roams all the time?"

"We have to check."

"What can I do to help?" Keil asked, crossing her arms across her chest. She leaned against the back of the couch, looking concerned. 

"Stay out of the way," Marlena explained. "I'm sorry you won't get to see the end of your show but you and Sean have to step outside while we search."

"Oh…I wasn't watching. I was upstairs with Evie when I heard Sean slam the door," Keil replied. "I came down to see what he was yelling about. Honestly, he can be such a jerk sometimes."

Evie. That's right. She spent nights with Keil and Sean while Sara was working. Breeze recalled Keil mentioning that earlier. 

"Evie's here?"

"Yeah. Sean just bought her a new dollhouse; I was helping Evie set it up. She's such a sweetheart, makes me wish she was my own," Keil said wistfully.

"Hers is a room we probably won't be checking and if we do so, it will be the last," Marlena said. "It's unlikely that someone would hide poisonous materials in a four year old's bedroom."

Keil bobbed her head in agreement. 

"Is anyone else in the house besides you three?" 

"Layla," Keil said. "But she leaves at nine."

Marlena checked her watch. Eight-fifty. "Could you please tell Sean and Layla to evacuate?"

Keil frowned. "Sean won't like that."

"It's rather difficult to do a search with people in the house," Breeze said. "Please try?"

Sighing, Keil nodded and ascended the staircase. A minute or so later, Layla Feldman came down, dressed in tight black jeans and a vintage Metallica tour shirt, an odd choice for a devoted Eric Clapton fan such as she. On her feet were new-looking chunky white Sketchers sneakers. Obviously this was a casual workplace for her. Marlena expected her to be in a pantsuit and heels. In the crook of her arm, Layla carried a battered Five-Star notebook thick with notes and a large denim purse was slung on her shoulder.

"Hello, Layla," Marlena greeted her.

"Good evening, Ms Reagan," Layla said without emotion.

"May I look through your purse before you leave?" 

"Why?"

"This is a routine search. No rock nor leaf is left unturned."

With an annoyed sigh, she handed Marlena the purse. With gloved hands and a Mag-Lite, Marlena sifted through the bag, examining every object. Some tampons, spearmint Tic-Tacs, half a packet of Juicy Fruit, a compact, a tube of lipstick (not Valiant Burgundy), a red silk wallet containing fifty-three dollars, a comb, a red CD Walkman containing a Best Of Sheryl Crowe CD, _Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas_ by James Patterson. It was all legit.

"Thank you," Marlena said, handing Layla her purse back. 

Layla nodded and went towards the kitchen, where supposedly the back door was. 

Marlena and Breeze patiently waited for Keil, Sean and Evie to come down. When it became a ridiculously long wait, Marlena became annoyed. 

"Should I go see what's keeping them?" Breeze asked.

"Go ahead," Marlena said. "I'm going to start in the kitchen." She picked up her field kit and headed where Layla Feldman had gone. 

Breeze climbed the long steps upstairs and desperately tried to locate where Sean and Keil might be. 

At the end of the long corridor, directly across from the top landing of the stairs, she saw light coming through a heavy oak door. She opened it and stepped into a reception area holding several couches and a large semi-circle white desk containing a computer, a laser printer, a fax machine and a typewriter. This was most likely where Layla set up shop. There were two doors just beside Layla's clerical station. One led to a small courtesy bathroom with just a commode and a sink. The other was slightly ajar. Breeze approached it, heard voices and listened. Keil and Sean were yelling.

"…let them come in, Keil?!" Sean was shouting. 

"The sooner you do it, the sooner you can get back to work," Keil reasoned with him in a calm even voice, one with a tone that didn't make her seem as dumb as when Breeze first met her. "Then the sooner we can get some dinner."

"Those people fucked up my entire schedule for the past few days. You think I _liked_ having to cancel a conference with Jack Bellman from the Salutations Company? They supply my spa with towels, Keil! Robes, towels and sandals—I can't have a _spa_ without those things!" Sean whined like a child being denied pre-dinner ice cream. "I had to cancel Ducky Robertson from the Heaven's Air Company! I get my God-damn _lotions_ and _oils_ from them! You don't fucking _cancel_ Ducky Robertson! She fucking cancels _you_!"

"Oh for God's sake, Sean. If you hadn't—"

"Hadn't what? Killed my wife's boyfriend? You think I did it, Keil?"

"No! Of course not!" Keil sounded horrified. 

"Then leave me the hell alone!" 

"Sean, just prove to these people that we have nothing in our home where we raise a four year old that could kill a grown man!" Keil was hysterical now. "Do it for Evie, _please_!"

Breeze chose this time to knock on the door. Keil bade her to enter, which she did, cautiously. Sean was seated behind his very large glass-and-granite desk, his face rosy with anger. Keil stood in front of it, Evie on her hip. Evie was partially asleep, her head on Keil's shoulder, dressed in a frilly white antique nightgown. She was oblivious to the shouting match.

"Mr. Gentileschi, Ms. Anson," Breeze said softly. "We really need you two and Evie outside so CSI Reagan and I can do our job. This is a very large house with large rooms. It will take us a long time and the sooner you comply, the sooner we can all get back to normal."

"Listen, missy," Sean stood behind his desk and leaned against it. "I will stay right here."

"Fine," Breeze said smugly. "Then I'll just call the police and have them arrest you for failing to cooperate with officers of law…" she plucked her cell phone off her hip of her jeans and posed her finger to press Speed Dial One: Jim Brass. She glared at Sean, daring him.

Sean exhaled sharply, trilling his lips and sounding like a starved horse. "Fine…fine. Have it your way. But if I find _anything_ missing…_anything_…you can bet I'll have my lawyer on your ass so fast the whole CSI building will spin until it goes up in flames."

"Go for it," Breeze retorted.

Sean wiped his hands together and stalked out of the office. Keil, who now had expensive-looking flip-flops on her feet, followed, Evie clinging to her like a spider. Breeze smirked behind their backs. 

"Breeze?" Marlena called.

"What?"

"Why don't you start with the room you're standing in?"

"The office?" 

"Good as any place to start."

Breeze trudged downstairs and picked up her field kit that she'd left at the bottom step of the long flight. She started at Layla's desk, rifling through papers in gloved hands, flipping notes over, shaking out notebooks, emptying the file cabinet. Layla's office alone took her two hours. Her shirt was sticking to her skin as she begrudgingly moved to Sean's.

"Ms. Reagan?" Layla's sweet voice penetrated the silence Marlena was enjoying as she searched the study. She'd just finished the kitchen and came up empty-handed. 

"Layla, you shouldn't be in here," Marlena said as she looked behind a plastic globe.

"Sean and Keil want to know how much longer," Layla asked hurriedly.

"A while. I don't know what Breeze's progress is, but definitely awhile. Tell them if we don't finish in another hour, they are advised to check into a hotel."

"Okay—"

"MARLENA!" Breeze's shout echoed through the House of Lomi, startling Marlena so much she dropped her Mag-Lite. She left the study, past a confused-looking Layla and followed the sound of Breeze's exclamation. 

"Breeze?"

"In Sean's office."

Marlena quickly found her partner. She was sitting on the floor of Sean Gentileschi's office besides the glass desk.

"What is it?" Marlena asked, out of breath. 

Breeze grinned triumphantly and held up a bag of mysterious white powder. 

Greg looked up from his microscope and shook his head, "I'm sorry ladies, but it's not your murder weapon."

Breeze and Marlena gave each other shocked looks.

"Greg, please say this is another one of your bad jokes?" Breeze pouted. 

"Wish I could. Your white powder is not strychnine but none other than cocaine."

"Cocaine?" the two women exclaimed in chorus.

"Yep. Looks like between banging two women, running his day spa and being an asshole, Sean Gentileschi here was doing lines."

Breeze groaned. "I thought I had something."

"You do," Marlena assured her. "Reckless endangerment, trespassing and now we have Sean for possession of narcotics."

"So much for having a safe environment to raise a four year old in."

Greg grinned, "I know I would love to be a four year old living in a house of cocaine." 

"Yeah, we know you would."

Marlena blew her hair out of her face. "Well, back to square one, I guess. Come on, Breeze, let's go find Sasha."

The pair walked down the hall, melancholy to the fact that they were so close from nailing Sean Gentileschi as Gil Grissom's murderer.

"Since the cocaine was the only white powder we found, we can cross out Sean, right?" Breeze asked.

"I imagine so," Marlena replied. "The rooms I covered were so squeaky clean it was as if the Brady Bunch lived there."

"I peeked into Evie's room," Breeze revealed. "Sean loves that girl a lot despite the fact she's not his daughter."

"I wonder who is?"

"Marlena? Did you feel that?"

"Feel what?"

"The ground is rumbling, there's a wind picking up. The logic train just passed and you missed it."

"You don't think…Sara and _Grissom_?" Marlena almost laughed. "No. If Grissom had a daughter. Don't you think he'd be playing the proud father?" 

"No. I don't. But I do think that's why I'm starting to agree with Sasha. There are _so_ many signs pointing to Sean. Shoeprints, the baseball bat, threats, spying, going to great lengths to find out why Sara was acting strange—"

"Breeze," Marlena interrupted her. "The only way to be positive is to check out all routes."

Breeze groaned. "I'm so tired. I'm gonna go to sleep. Pass out in the break room. Something. Are you going to the memorial service?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'll see you there, then?"

"You bet."

Breeze and Marlena went their separate ways, to separate rooms, but they both had the same idea: a nice long nap.


	16. Wine in Memory

The memorial service for Gil Grissom at the Lady of the Divine Church was the biggest Marlena had seen in a long time. Everyone from the bureau was there, and some of their family members as well. Of course, he would not be buried until the investigation was complete but someone had ordered a memorial service as soon as possible and the actual funeral would take place later.

Gil's former team and Detective Jim Brass took the front pew, dressed in black and dark colors, wearing solemn expressions. Warrick clutched the hand of his wife Merilee while Nick's very pregnant wife Adriana leaned her head on her husband's shoulder in comfort. Catherine, and Sara were quietly sobbing into handkerchiefs while nearby, fourteen-year-old Lindsay Willows silently entertained four-year-old Evie Sidle, who did not have the attention span necessary for something that required her to sit still and stay quiet for so long.

The more Marlena stole glances at the four remaining members of the most successful CSI team in Clark County, the more they truly resembled four grieving children mourning the loss of their father.

Each of the members were came up to the pedestal and say something about Gil. All held up well until Sara broke down in the middle of hers.

"From the moment I met Gil Grissom," she began in a shaky voice, "until the last time I saw him, he was _always_ a serious, hardworking and…_kind_ man. He always…He was _always_ putting other people ahead of himself and his own needs…always helping people, which is why he was _so_ good at his job and…like everyone else in our group…I _loved_ him…like a father. No matter _how_ hard he pushed us to…use our heads and _think_ until we had the right answer, no matter _how_ tough he could be on us…we were always friends at the end of the day. And…I _loved_ him—" Sara choked on a sob and suddenly proclaimed, "I'm sorry…I…" and stepped down and ran from the chapel leaving a trail of sobs behind her. Alarmed, Catherine whispered something to Lindsay and then went after Sara. Marlena was tempted to go too but decided to butt out. 

"What do you think is the matter with her?" Breeze whispered, who was sitting beside Marlena. "Everyone was fine until—"

"I don't know," Marlena said softly. "She's taking it the hardest, isn't she?"

"Well, she _did_ see his body first."

"Actually, _I_—"

"You should go see what's wrong. You're her friend."

Marlena peered over her shoulder and saw just outside the doorway where Catherine and Sara were embracing. "No…Catherine's her friend…she's okay, Breeze."

The chapel was full of the murmurs of shock at Sara's "outburst". Even Nick and Warrick were in hushed discussion. Even so, the service went on and Sara returned just in time for the closing hymn. She gathered little Evie into her arms and held her close, burying her face in the child's hair.

"I wonder why she's so despondent," Breeze wondered, still keeping her voice in a low whisper. 

"Same reason why everyone else is," Marlena whispered back. "She's lost a friend."

Warrick generously donated the use of his home for the repass after Gil Grissom's funeral. He and his wife Merilee provided a light lunch buffet and drinks. They lived in the suburbs of Las Vegas, not unlike the rest of the bureau, in a charming neighborhood compressed together with picturesque townhouses and apartments. The Browns had two young boys—Isaac, age 5 and Ari, age 2. Ari never left Merilee's side the entire time while Isaac held fast to his father.

Marlena, who loved kids, was charmed by the sweet shyness of both handsome boys and complimented both Warrick and Merilee on such beautiful children.

Sara did not attend the repass but Marlena spotted Evie following Lindsay like a baby duck. When Marlena inquired Catherine about it, she answered,

"I volunteered to watch Evie for Sara tonight. Lindsay, thank God, has been a trooper and is taking over the job for me for now. Poor Sara looked like she needed some sleep."

Marlena wondered how many times Sara would be preferred to as "poor" during the course of this investigation. "Is she okay?"

"Who, Sara? Yeah, she'll be fine. She's tough. You know that steel backbone Sasha's always bragging about? Well, Sara's got one of titanium alloy. My guess is she'll pop a sleeping pill and collapse into bed until the sun rises. Frankly, that's what I feel like doing right now," Catherine managed to joke. 

Marlena cracked a tiny smile, "How are you holding up, Catherine? Right now you seem the strongest of anyone here."

"I'm learning to accept," Catherine replied after a pause, "the fact that Gil's really gone. What I _cannot_ accept is how."

"We're working on that," Marlena swore.

"Mom!" Lindsay's urgent voice called. She emerged from the crowd dragging a sniffling child by the hand. "Evie wants her _mother_."

"Oh, Lindsay," Catherine sighed. She held out her arms, "C'mere, Evie."

Lindsay plopped Evie into Catherine's arms and stalked off. Stifling her sobs, cherub-faced Evie buried her face in Catherine's shoulder, who was looking weary. "I take that back. Lindsay _was_ a trooper."

"If could watch her for a little if you want," Marlena offered.

"Aw, no, I couldn't ask you to do that," Catherine brushed some of Evie's chocolate curls out of her face. Evie had stuck her thumb in her mouth and was sucking silently as a form of comfort. "I'll be okay with her. Come on, Evie. Let's get you something to eat." Before excusing herself, Catherine put a comforting and reassuring hand on Marlena's shoulder. "Your first case is always tough. But if I may give you some advice from a great man: 'concentrate on what cannot lie—the evidence'."

Marlena eventually got a chance to sneak away from the gathering and get some fresh air. She stood out on the porch and took a deep breath, loving what desert air did for her. Feeling slightly feverish, she took off her black knitted duster which she wore over a black pleated skirt and a black turtle-necked tank top. She wore her favorite patent leather square-toed flats on her feet that she wore so often they were like her sneakers. 

By accident as she snuck to the corner of the Browns' beige stucco home to smoke a cigarette, hoping the light wind would carry away any smells of smoke, draping her duster over her arm, she discovered Breeze doing the same thing.

She was casually puffing on a Newport, looking like a teenage delinquent who had cut class. She was wearing a black silk sundress with beaded straps and beads running up and down both sides. She leaned up against the house, her black stilettos on the grass beside her and her black Kate Spade handbag was beside it. One leg was tucked up under her dress like a flamingo. Her white-blonde hair was cascaded over her tanned shoulders.

When she caught Marlena spying, her eyes widened in surprise.

"Yes, you've discovered my awful secret!" she exclaimed. "I'm a closet smoker! I am so smart yet so dumb! Sue me!"

Marlena almost laughed as she took her half-empty carton of Parliaments from her purse and withdrew a single one. "I'm not gonna nark, Breeze. I was actually gonna ask you if you had a light?" 

"Oh," Breeze reached into her own purse and took out a small purple lighter. "Knock yourself out."

"Don't mind if I do," Marlena mumbled as she lit up but only after she admired Breeze's lighter that had silver designs embossed on it with _Capricorn_ written across it. "Now I know why they call Vegas, 'Sin City'," she sighed, chucked the lighter back to Breeze and then tossed back her dirty-blond hair.

Breeze chuckled, "Just now? Hell, I've known it since I was eighteen."

"I don't know about you," Marlena sighed between puffs, "but it was getting hard to breathe in there." She gestured towards the house. "And here we are dirtying up our lungs."

"I know what you mean. It's like walking on eggshells. I feel like I was invading a private event."

"Like a little kid spying on Mom and Dad's cocktail party."

"Yes. Exactly."

The two women smoked in silence for a moment, the sweet scent of tobacco mingling with the dry desert air. Marlena watched the smoke curling up to the sky in intricate designs. Breeze practiced her smoke rings. Sounds of chatter became lighter and more festive in the Browns' home. 

"What made you want to be a forensics investigator?" Breeze blurted suddenly.

A bit taken aback by the randomness of the question, Marlena pursed her lips inquisitively, "I dunno. Why do you ask?"

Breeze shrugged, "Just curious."

Marlena paused in thought. "I guess it was something that interested me. Like most of the guys at CSI, I like puzzles. Let's just say my mother's not exactly thrilled that I 'play with dead people'—as she puts it—and therefore my work is done there."

Breeze laughed.

"What about you? What made you go into forensics?"

Taking a long drag on her cigarette, Breeze flicked some ashes off and she responded, "I always liked science, liked mysteries and puzzles, too. My friends and parents never took me to see those kinds of movies 'cause I'd know who did it within, like, the first ten minutes or so. I was _always_ a genius. You know, I even started kindergarten at four; entered high school when I was twelve; college at sixteen-and-a-half. I'm not even thirty and I'm almost as high as Catherine Willows on the CSI ladder," Breeze sniffled back tears but she was loosing. A rogue tear escaped from the eye with the pierced brow and ruined her carefully applied eyeliner and mascara. "She worked so hard and I kind of feel like I'm cheating." The tear left a sooty streak on Breeze's cheek as it dropped off her chin.

"Why? Because you're smart?" Marlena put her arm around the young CSI, who had already buried her face in her hands. The still-burning Newport dangled from her fingers. "Don't blame yourself, Breeze."

"You're right. I'm being silly. Damn it. I _hate_ crying." Breeze sighed heavily and lifted her face. Marlena saw why she hated crying and successfully stifled a laugh, for Breeze's make-up had run and made her look like a raccoon. "I bet I look a mess."

"Yup," Marlena reached into her purse and handed Breeze a compact, who gasped when she saw her reflection.

"Sweet mother of pearl!" Breeze moaned. "_Waterproof_ _mascara_, my cellulite-free ass. Have you got a tissue in that bag of wonders, Marlena?" 

Marlena nodded and supplied. Breeze frantically wiped off as much as the mascara and eyeliner as she could and, using cosmetics from her own purse, reapplied the mascara, but not before she stubbed out her cigarette, grinding it into the dirt with her pantyhosed foot. Marlena never noticed that without mascara, it looked as if Breeze had almost no eyelashes and very little of her eyebrows, since they were such a light blonde like her hair. It was rare that she saw her friend without make-up.

"It's not as perfect as it was this afternoon, but at least I don't look like a such a hairless cat," Breeze remarked, capping her tube of Great Lash and sniffling. "I think I need a glass of wine. One glass. Think Warrick supplied?"

Marlena cocked her head to listen to the activity inside. There was some social chatter and more sounds of activity. The light, almost somber tune of a piano was drifting outside and reached their ears. "Yes. Most definitely. You like red or white?"

Breeze sniffled as she powdered her nose with Marlena's compact and underneath her eyes, concentrating mainly on her eyebrows. "Oh, I like my wine like all my past boyfriends—white, strong and robust." She snapped the compact closed and handed it to Marlena, who laughed and stubbed her cigarette out too. 

The two woman put their arms around each other for support and went back inside Warrick's home, for Gilbert Thatcher Grissom's last party on Earth. 


	17. Lady Heather

The first day back at work after Grissom's service, Marlena was ready to pounce. The situation with Sean had gotten her fired up and was giving out orders like crazy. As soon as Breeze and Sasha trudged in, Marlena began cracking the whip.

"Breeze, I'd like you and Sasha to go to Lady Heather's," she said. "I'm gonna go to Sara's and see what the deal is there. I know for a fact she's taking a sick day because of what happened at the memorial service. A little R&R, Catherine said."

Sasha smiled brightly, "Me and Breeze…in a sex domain? I think I'm gonna need more than rubber _gloves_…"

Breeze rolled her eyes, "Dream on."

"Don't worry, I will."

"Guys," Marlena said firmly. "Come on. We're so close. I can almost taste it."

Lady Heather was not quite what Breeze expected when she answered the door of the Domain, which, from the outside looked like an exquisitely preserved Victorian mansion that seemed out-of-place and glamorous among the more modern townhouses in the midst of which it was nestled. To Breeze, Lady Heather looked younger than she probably was and taller, too. 

"May I help you?" Lady Heather asked in a smooth voice dripping with honey. She wore a black, lace-trimmed leather corset with fishnet stockings with a knee-length black lace peignoir over it, with faux fur trimming the collar, hem and sleeves. Around her neck was a large onyx cross so shiny that one could see their reflection in it. It was suspended on a black beaded chain. On her feet were black, Victorian-style lace-up boots. She was pale with bone-straight reddish-brown hair with long curved bangs and wore gobs of carefully applied Gothic make-up. She looked like a ghostly burlesque house dancer.

"_You're_ Lady Heather?" Sasha asked from behind Breeze. 

"That I am. Have you come for my services?"

"In a way."

"Please, come in. And welcome to Lady Heather's Domain."

The foyer of the Domain was a creepy-elegant cross between _The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas _and_ The Munsters_. Candles burned up and down the candelabras on the walls and a huge crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, dimly lit. The décor was mainly in red and white with black accents. Faintly, moans and screams could be heard that, if it weren't for the erotic setting, would have been mistaken for the tortured moans and screams of ghosts and phantasms. 

As Sasha and Breeze stepped inside, a gentle wind came with them and accidentally blew out half a dozen of Lady Heather's candles. 

"What is it you desire?" Lady Heather continued, taking a box of kitchen matches from a drawer of a nearby table. She began to relight the candles but didn't break eye contact with Breeze and Sasha. "A fantasy, one on one? Or would you like to select a third to join you? You must know that intercourse is _strictly_ against the rules and we only play on the _theatrics_ of erotica."

Goosebumps rose on Breeze's bare arms as she showed Lady Heather her ID, "Actually, Ms. Paruvski, we're from the Las Vegas Crime Lab. I'm Breeze Hamelin and this is Sasha Zarek," she explained. "Does the name Gilbert Thatcher Grissom hold any importance to you?" 

"Yes, I know Gil Grissom," Lady Heather nodded and finished lighting the candles. She pursed her lips; blew out the match and put the box away and shot Breeze and Sasha—mainly Sasha—a small, seductive smile as if this were a private joke between friends. "I know Mister Grissom very well. He's a very big fan of my lipstick."

Before Breeze could question Lady Heather's somewhat sarcastic remark, Sasha jumped in somewhat cruelly.

"He's dead," he said flatly. "He was found poisoned in his home three nights ago."

"Dead?" Lady Heather's straight expression softened slightly. 

"Yes. I'm sorry."

Lady Heather was silent for a long time. Without breaking down, she mutely glided to a chair beside the white wooden stairwell and put her head in her hands. All Sasha and Breeze could do was look at each other in utter surprise.

Finally, Lady Heather stood. "I'm sorry. Gil—Mister Grissom and I were very close. To call him my boyfriend seems juvenile but that was the extent of our relationship. He was a wonderful man, very serious…sweet…a deep raconteur." 

"I'm sorry for your loss," Breeze said. 

"Again, tell me. When did he…?"

"Almost three nights ago."

"So…I guess that is why he did not return my call." Lady Heather pursed her lips as if repressing tears. "I blamed it on his hearing, but only in jest. Sometimes he wouldn't hear the phone but he would get to his messages eventually if they were important enough to him." She lowered her eyes, unbecoming of someone who made a career of dominance. 

"He was poisoned with strychnine," Breeze continued. "We have a warrant to search the property for any."

Lady Heather's head snapped up, her gaze hardened, her eyes narrowed, "You think _I_ poisoned him?"

"We found your fingerprints at the scene of the crime, mainly on his bottles of herbal medicines," Sasha explained. "We believe it's the origin of the strychnine."

"I was Gil's…companion. I had all access to his home. Of course my prints would be on his 'medications'—I would bring him the bottles sometimes, if he was cooking or his hands were…busy."

"You were there, however, the day he died?"

"Yes," Lady Heather replied firmly. "I was there at least twice a week but most of the time, Gil came here. We would have tea in my garden, talk. He's…_he was_…a brilliant man. Our talks were always priceless. Beautiful and priceless."

"What time were you there?"

"Oh…I believe around four PM. We'd converse and sometimes we'd cook dinner together. I was usually gone by seven. He would always go for a walk after I left. Mister Grissom was indeed a creature of habit, especially since he retired from the bureau."

"We also found your DNA in your wine glass used the night he died, too," Breeze continued. "We did a saliva test. And judging by the color of your lips, that was your lipstick, too." Breeze shined her penlight on Lady Heather's full lips to highlight them in the duskiness of the room, despite the fact it was the early afternoon. The windows were all covered with heavy black and red curtains. "The Colour Institute, Valiant Burgundy? You did say that Gil Grissom loved your lipstick."

Lady Heather's hand went to her mouth. Her long nails matched her lip color exactly. 

"Feel free to search the house. But I warn you—do not open any closed doors."

Sasha nodded and grabbed his field kit, heading towards the back of the house. Before Breeze followed, she took two envelopes from her own field kit and approached Lady Heather. 

"Ms. Paruvski?"

Lady Heather looked up in surprise as if she hadn't heard her surname in ages.

"I'm going to need to see your hands."

As if she knew exactly what Breeze was looking for, Lady Heather held out her hands, palms up. There was a very small puncture wound on the puffy skin by her thumb. The skin around the wound was red and angry-looking. 

"That looks like it hurt," Breeze swabbed the wound with a sterilized Q-Tip. "How'd you get that?"

"Kitchen accident," Lady Heather replied tersely.

"It looks infected. You might want to get some hydrocortisone on that," Breeze said as she labeled the envelope. "I'll need a strand of hair, too, please. Follicle."

Quickly, Lady Heather reached behind her head and tore off a few strands which Breeze took from her with tweezers.

"Thank you, Ms Paruvski," Breeze said as she placed them in the second envelope. 

Lady Heather gave a nod and stalked off in the opposite direction of Sasha, the click of her high-heeled boots trailing after her, making sounds like hail on the wooden floor, like nails on a coffin.

Breeze followed Sasha's footsteps, trying to find him.

"Sash?" she called.

"In the kitchen," came his muffled voice, straight ahead. 

She walked down a long corridor and did was she was advised and did not open the closed doors along the way. She finally found her partner digging around in gloved hands in Lady Heather's kitchen, which was smaller than she expected. 

"Find anything?" she asked Sasha, who had his head in a cabinet. 

"I was just about to ask you about the same thing," Sasha turned to face her. His sandy hair was plastered against his forehead, the curls matted. 

Breeze held up the two envelopes, "Blood scraping and hair sample from Lady Heather."

"Blood?"

"She had a new puncture wound on her hand. Very small. Remember Marlena told us about the small bit of blood on the tip of the knife?"

"Think it's Heather's?" 

"It might be. She said they used to cook dinner together."

"There's only one way to find out."

"We'll run it through CODIS. We don't really have any previous DNA of hers on record so at least this is something."

Sasha turned back to the cabinet he was inspecting, penlight in his mouth. He rummaged around for a minute and spoke around it, "Why don't you go out into Lady Heather's garden and check for strychnine on her flowers or whatever the hell she's growin' back there." 

"Must be flowers," Breeze said, pulling her back with a wide white cotton headband and tugging on my latex gloves. "No one in their right mind would use strychnine in a vegetable garden, especially one in their own backyard that feed themselves and their families. It _is_ fatal after all."

"No kidding."

Breeze strutted outside and was ready to get down and dirty but at the same time wished she hadn't worn one of her favorite pairs of khakis. 

Lady Heather's garden was one to be awed with. It was in full bloom with snapdragons, tulips, bleeding hearts, sunflowers, chrysanthemums, daffodils, irises, lilacs, posies and so many other flowers that Breeze couldn't name them all. 

On the other hand, she did realize that all these flowers meant more time in the garden than she estimated.

For the next two hours, Breeze crawled on her hands and knees in the dirt in the soil, ultimately ruining her khakis. Armed with a strong magnifying glass, tweezers and a spade, Breeze made sure no leaf was left unturned. In spite of this, every time she thought she found something, it turned out to be nothing, which is what she ended up getting. Until, however, she came to a patch of brightly colored nasturtiums. She perused the plant with her magnifying glass and her eyes widened at what she found.

White powder flecked the leaves and the surface of the soil and tiny but not unnoticeable specks were on some petals. Breeze plucked off a leaf and a petal and enveloped them, along with a scoop of dirt. 

__

Looks like strychnine, she thought to herself. It wasn't until Breeze stood up until she realized something: _nasturtiums were to be eaten._

Quickly, she squatted again to give the patch a closer inspection, inspecting it to see if any blossoms had been snipped off.

"Find anything?" came Sasha's voice. He squatted beside her. Breeze wiped her sweaty brow with her forearm and tried to figure out how he'd managed to get so close to her without her hearing him move. Sasha rolled up the sleeves of his red work shirt and unbuttoned the top three buttons. His front curls were wet with perspiration.

"What do you know about flowers?" Breeze asked in response, not taking her eyes or her hands off the nasturtium.

Sasha shrugged, "They look good, smell nice and make a good last-minute gift. What about them?"

"My mother was a die-hard hippie gardener. She'd teach me all about flowers and plants, whether I wanted to learn or not. But I listened. Nasturtiums, these plants I'm looking at now, are a kind of flower whose petals can be eaten. They're used in salads mainly. Sasha, I've been crawling on my hands and knees for nearly two hours. I've got grass stains on my shirt and I wrecked my khakis. These nasturtiums are the first plants I've inspected that look like they have strychnine on them," Breeze shot Sasha a look that said, _are you following me?_

"I think I get it. You think Lady Heather fed Grissom a meal that included nasturtiums for erotic appeal that turned into fatal attraction."

"Lady Heather does seem to be the queen of erotica," Breeze said, standing up. 

"I know there was strychnine on the pycnogenol, but no trace of the pycnogenol. Who says that the pills were what brought it into his system?" Sasha said.

"Well, let's go do some beseeching of the sovereign."


	18. Open Doors

"Ms. Paruvski," Breeze began as she and Sasha sat across from Lady Heather in the interrogation room back at CSI HQ. Detective Kenyon Browning was standing in the dark corner with Cameron Howe, who was operating the camcorder. "I'd like to begin by thanking you for coming on such short notice."

"The pleasure is all mine," Lady Heather nodded slightly. She was no longer dressed in her dominatrix outfit, but she had changed before leaving her Domain in charge of her protégée, Lady Saskia. Instead of her corset and fishnets, she was wearing a flaming-red lamé sundress and matching spiked-heeled sandals. 

"I'm sure," Breeze said wryly. 

"Well," Lady Heather sat back. "What is it that you nee to talk to me about that is so important that you must drag me away from my Domain?" 

"Don't worry, Lady Heather, we'll have you back to cracking whips in no time," Sasha said sarcastically. "We just have some evidence that points towards you as the could-be murderer of Gilbert Grissom."

Lady Heather's eyes shot fiery darts at Sasha, "Then by all means, Mister Zarek, _enlighten_ me."

"That we will do."

Breeze began, "Ms. Paruvski, I assume that you are an avid gardener?"

A pause and then a nod from Lady Heather. "When I get the chance I do my own work. Most of the time I use my sprinkler system and pay my neighbor's son to take care of the weeding and so on."

"Your neighbor?" Breeze peered at Lady Heather over the legal pad she held to jot down notes.

"Her name is Carrie Leaping Water. She's a Paiute Indian, thirty-seven years old. Her son Matthew Lynx is seventeen, a sweet boy. Does my yard work. They live to my right, visit the reservation in Las Vegas once and a while. They're very quiet people, stay to themselves a lot. Nice people."

"Does Matthew Lynx have free access to your estate?"

"No. I let him in myself. My gates are always locked, as you observed."

"He has no other way to get in? No side entrances?" 

Lady Heather shook her head. "No. I'm sure you saw the high wooden fencing around my garden, Miss Hamelin. No one would be able to climb it without breaking something on the jump down. Same goes for my iron gates. And to be honest, I haven't found a body yet and if I had, you can be sure I would call you straightaway."

Ignoring Lady Heather's dry attempt of humor, Breeze continued. "So the only way to get to the garden is through you?"

"Yes. Matthew Lynx buzzes at the gate. I let him in and once he closes the gate behind him, it locks automatically again. I lead him through the house and out to the garden," Lady Heather paused, stuck out her chin and crossed her legs. "In my line of work, safety goes hand-in-hand with pleasure. High walls are meant to keep good things in and bad things out."

"Getting back to the garden," Sasha said, sliding a few Polaroid snapshots across the table to Lady Heather. "You recognize these flowers ?" 

Lady Heather picked up the Polaroid's carefully and scrutinized them, "Yes. These are nasturtiums. They tend to thrive in my garden, they spread like kudzu. They aren't very fragrant but I indulge in their color. Vibrant, aren't they?" she pointed at the photo with a long fingernail.

Breeze jumped in again, "Are you aware that nasturtiums are one of the few flowers that can be eaten? Along with violets, Johnny Jumpups, a few kinds of roses…"

Lady Heather waved a hand to discontinue Breeze, "Yes, yes."

"Have you ever _eaten_ the nasturtiums?"

"Once, when I first began planting them. I never cared for the taste, really."

"Miss Hamelin found traces of strychnine on the leaves, petals and on the surface of the soil of these nasturtiums," Sasha explained after a beat, knowing for sure that it was strychnine—he and Breeze had them processed earlier in the evening.

"We already found strychnine coated on some of Grissom's herbal pills, but we still don't know who put it there. However isn't it odd," Breeze raised her pierced eyebrow, "that we find strychnine on the only plant in your garden that can be eaten?" 

Sasha continued, "Not to mention several blossoms were missing from the stalk. From the photographs you can see they were ripped from the stems, not snipped, due to jagged edges. If they were snipped, especially with clippers, the edges would be smooth," His metallic gray eyes fixated on her. 

Lady Heather peered at Sasha over the photograph, her nearly-black eyes shooting fiery darts at him. "You accuse me of murder? Mister Zarek, this seems dangerously unorthodox. Have I a motive?"

"Let's worry about motive later. Right now, we'll concentrate on how you got the strychnine."

"Mister Grissom gave it to me," Lady Heather answered blatantly.

"Mister Grissom gave it to you?" 

"That is correct. I was sort of friendly with his maid, Solange? I'm somewhat eloquent in French so conversing with her was simple. When our conversations turned to gardening one day, I mentioned I had a jackrabbit problem. Or _problème de lapin_. They developed a taste for my nasturtiums.

"Solange told me her sister uses strychnine in her garden and it was a strong control agent against birds, insects and mammals. I expressed interest and Solange—vicariously through Mister Grissom—gave me some strychnine to try out."

__

So the strychnine is once again traced back to Solange, Breeze thoughts. "How long were you using strychnine in your garden?" 

"Not very. I only stopped but two-and-a-half weeks ago. I used to get hummingbirds and butterflies in my garden, but after I used the strychnine, I got less and less until none at all. So I removed as much as I could. But when I noticed my nasturtiums were being eaten again, I concentrated solely on those."

"How did you remove the strychnine?"

"It's a fine white powder and I found it disintegrates in water. So I gently sprayed the flowers with water, but not before I scooped off what I could from the top of the dirt. It was a long process but in a way I had managed to somewhat flood out the strychnine without killing my flowers. So in answer to your question: very carefully."

"Is it completely removed?" 

"I imagine some residue still lingers in places unseen to the naked eye. However, at least the hummingbirds and butterflies have returned."

"What are your flowers used for?" Breeze asked.

Lady Heather smirked, "Miss Hamelin, you do surprise me. For someone as young as yourself, your intelligence is extraordinary. But when you ask such questions such as these, I begin to doubt your astuteness."

"Just answer the question, please."

"What do you _think_ flowers are used for, Miss Hamelin? Decoration. Atmosphere. Erotica. Definitely _not_ cuisine or whatever matter you're suggesting. I suggest the jagged ends are the result of a jackrabbit or perhaps some other wild animal. But I can give you my solemn word—I did not kill Mister Grissom."

Breeze raised her pierced eyebrow behind her legal pad. _Why does she keep calling him Mister Grissom? She was obviously fond of him, she calls herself his consort, so why the formality? Is she calling him Mister Grissom because _we're_ calling him Mister Grissom? _"Did Gil Grissom come into contact with the strychnine-affected flowers on the night he died?" she asked.

"No. I did indeed bring him fresh flowers, as I did about once a week or every two weeks. But I made sure that I rinsed them to rid them of the poison after I snipped them. I would fill my kitchen sink with water and let the flowers soak for twenty-four hours. Then, I would remove them from the sink, put them on a towel, drain the sink and then just use the sink hose to rinse the flowers off. It's quite simple," Lady Heather paused. "Last time I was over at his house, I brought him some Gerber daisies, beautiful daisies, bright orange and purple. I even threw in some blue daisies I'd made myself."

"How do you make blue daisies?" 

Tossing her hair back, Lady Heather explained as if Breeze was an absolute dimwit and this was something _everyone_ should know, "Dye the water blue with food coloring and then put the flowers in. They soak up the water and eventually turn blue. No harsh chemicals involved," she added pointedly. "I always managed to bring Mister Grissom some blue flowers, no matter what the flavor of the week—I always told him it was a color that suited him though he preferred the white flowers that brought bugs."

__

Still calling him Mister Grissom, eh? Breeze thought. _Watch out Lady Heather. I'll be pulling out the big guns soon._

Sasha flipped through his own notes and once again took over the questioning. "Ms. Paruvski, was Mister Grissom acting strangely the last time you saw him?"

"Strangely?"

"Disoriented, listless, complaining of headaches?" 

Lady Heather paused. "Slightly. We would be in the middle of something and he would take of his glasses like he did when he was going to kiss me. But instead he would just pinch here for a second," she pinched the bridge of her nose, "and then put his glasses back on. If he showed any signs of ailment, I'm sure he wouldn't have let me see. He didn't even like admitting to his hearing disorder in front of me. When I first asked him about it, he changed the subject. 'Are you loosing your hearing?' I asked. His reply was, 'I think I'm loosing my balance.' That was Mister Grissom's one flaw—he had, in a sense, too much pride."

"How long had he been doing this?" Sasha asked, mimicking the motion Lady Heather had done.

"I'm not sure. Mister Grissom had all sorts of these…odd actions he would do. I always secretly believed he had OCD—obsessive compulsive disorder. Quite possibly I'd only noticed the last time I saw him."

"Which was the night he died?" 

"Yes."

"Speaking of death," Sasha opened an old file, "It seems as though CSI was involved with the deaths of three of your employees in two years, between late 2001 and early 2002. Just how many people die in your line of work?"

Lady Heather glared, "Death is always an extremely rare possibility. My employees are well-trained. But, unfortunately, like the few cases you have examined in the past, people do get carried away. Injuries have indeed been reported, however all parties sign waivers before having personal sessions in my domain. It states that we at Lady Heather's Domain are not responsible for any S-and-M-related injuries and accidents done out of free will. I could show you a copy. It's all legally binding. I had my lawyer look it over and everything." 

"That won't be necessary." 

There was a pregnant pause. 

"Ms. Paruvski," Breeze sat erect and made straight eye contact with Lady Heather, "I noticed you, though you were his so-called 'companion', that you refer to Gil Grissom as 'Mister'. Why is that?"

Lady Heather crossed her legs, "Well, well, well. You _are_ as intelligent as you seem, aren't you, Miss Hamelin? You're very good, very good at catching that. You see, he has always been _Mister_ Grissom to me, and he never instructed that I call him otherwise, though it was obvious that the option to do so was open. I always referred to him as Mister Grissom, he always referred to me as _Lady_ Heather. Personally, there is something…erotic about titles such as those. Don't you think so, _Mister_ Zarek?"

Sasha gave Lady Heather a queer look, who returned it with a sly smile. 

Breeze, on the other hand, was perplexed, "So you never called each other just Gil or just Heather?" 

"Miss Hamelin," Lady Heather re-crossed her legs and leaned on the table, "I've made a career out of dominance. In my eyes, a name without a title is a sign of a weakness and the dominance belongs to the partner _with_ one. A title in front of a name establishes supremacy, it establishes reverence. Since Mister Grissom and I saw each other as neither equals nor rivals, we established the dominance on both sides of the coin."

"Interesting point of view," Breeze nodded to herself. 

"I don't see it as simply a 'point of view', but as a philosophy. When you become an expert on dominance such as I, then you see it more as a creed."

"Ms. Paruvski, have you ever had…had…" Breeze felt herself turning red ever so slightly. This was never a subject she felt completely at ease discussing. She knew this was more of Sara's area of expertise in the crime lab. "With Mister Grissom, have you ever had…"

Lady Heather raised an eyebrow, somewhat ridiculing Breeze's trademark expression of surprise, shock or confusion. "Had sexual intercourse? With Mister Grissom? I'm sorry, Miss Hamelin but no."

"No?" 

"No. There was heavy petting, but never did we go to the extremes. I think it was my career, you see, that made him nervous."

"We found your hairs in his bed," Breeze said. "Any idea of how they got there?"

"Yes, several, but would they be right?" 

"Only one way to find out."

"I can assure you, Miss Hamelin," Lady Heather replied firmly, "never have I lain beside Mister Grissom. I have opened up many things for him—my schedule, my mind, my heart—but rest assured my legs remained no part of it."

"We'll see about that," Breeze's expression remained stiff. "Recognize these?" Breeze opened a folder and produced the pair of Lady Heather's thong panties sealed in a plastic bag, the ones Sasha had found. "The DNA on them say they're yours and they were found in Mister Grissom's apartment. In his bedroom to be exact. Again, have any ideas?" 

"Again, yes, but this one I know I am right for sure," Lady Heather picked up the plastic bag. "I've been looking for these."

"Finders keepers."

"I know what you're getting at, Miss Hamelin. You really are trying to accuse me of something. I've been accused before; mistakes were made; I've been clean since. Why start now with the murder of my companion?"

"Well, tell us how the panties got in Mister Grissom's bedroom."

"I slept over. On the couch. One night we had some wine and we watched a movie. An Alfred Hitchcock, I think. I fell asleep and I woke up the next morning. Turns out the night before, Mister Grissom had simply covered me with a blanket and then went into his own room. He did not want to wake me up, which was a good idea, because I'm groggy and grumpy when I'm awoken prematurely. When I roused, there was a note on the coffee table that said that he'd been called to cover a class at the university and he wouldn't be back till late. I needed to get back to the Domain so I went down to my car, got a change of clothes, took the liberty of using his shower…I must have been in a hurry and forgotten my extra pair."

Sasha cleared his throat. "Thank you for cooperating, Ms. Paruvski," he said, standing. Breeze and Lady Heather followed suit and the two CSI's shook hands with the dominatrix. 

"You're very welcome," Lady Heather replied softly.

Breeze walked Lady Heather out.

"Lady Heather, could you tell me something, please?" 

"What?" Lady Heather stopped walking and turned to face the young CSI.

"Does…does this mean anything to you?" Breeze held out the plastic bag containing the opal ring. She had grabbed it before walking out of the examination room. Breeze handed Lady Heather the plastic bag, who knew enough not to open it. 

"It looks like a promise ring."

"Promise ring?"

"It's like a high school boy giving his sweetheart his class ring or the equivalent of a girl receiving her boyfriend's college fraternity pin. Worn on the third finger of the left hand, like a wedding ring. This is a nice one. What's the stone, a quartz?"

"Opal," Breeze corrected. 

"Ah. The opal. Traditionally the October birthstone."

"Yes."

"Is that an inscription?" Lady Heather squinted as she read it.

"Does it mean anything to you?" Breeze asked hopefully.

Lady Heather sighed. "Sadly, no. My birthday is in April."

"I meant the inscription."

"Hm. 'I'll Wait For You…If You Wait For Me'…well, this _is_ a promise ring," Lady Heather concluded.

"We found it in Grissom's home."

"Well," Lady Heather handed the bag back to Breeze, "then the ring obviously isn't for me."

The two women walked a bit more down the CSI HQ hallway in silence until they reached the front door. 

"How old are you, Miss Hamelin?" Lady Heather asked.

"Me? Twenty-six," Breeze answered, her head down. She was always a little ashamed of being so young. She always seemed to be the youngest or the 'baby' of everything, including her family—she was the 'baby' of four children at home in Oregon.

"Twenty-six? Just a baby"—here Breeze winced ever so slightly—"Why do you bother your young and lovely self with such a stressful job?"

"I don't see it as stress," Breeze answered curtly. "I see it as a release."

Lady Heather gave a small smile, "Good. That's good. Your job should bring you pleasure. Mine certainly does."

"I'm sure."

"If you ever want to leave forensics, Miss Hamelin," Lady Heather said before she stepped out the door of the bureau, "my door is always open."


	19. The Secret in the Skirt

Marlena arrived at Sara's apartment at the same time Breeze and Sasha were digging through Lady Heather's garden.

She came to apartment 17M, knocked sharply—one, twice, three times—and waited patiently for Sara to answer. 

She did, finally, pale-faced and ring-eyed, "Marlena?"

"Hi, Sar," Marlena smiled. "How you feelin'?"

"Like shit. I think I'm coming down with a flu bug," Sara said softly. "I've been throwing up…running a bit of a fever." 

"I'm sorry to hear that. I'm also sorry to tell you I'm going to have to do a search in your apartment. I have a warrant," Marlena added quickly.

"Oh…oh, yes. Of course," Sara opened up her door and stepped aside to let Marlena and her field kit in. 

Sara's apartment was neat, chairs pushed in, throw blankets folded, everything in its proper place except for the laptop open on the dining table and a pile of paperwork. It was quiet.

"Where's Evie?" Marlena asked.

"Daycare," Sara said, closing the door. "I, um, heard about what Breeze found on Sean."

"Yeah. I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Sara reassured her. "He swore he quit, when I was with him. Swore up and down. It's hard to trust people nowadays, isn't it?"

"So he _was_ a user?"

"Yes. I caught him doing lines on more than one occasion. I was so angry I poured his whole stash down the toilet. But he told me stopped because of Evie."

Marlena nodded. "Sara, you're CSI, so you know the drill. I don't have to ask you to—"

"I know," Sara nodded. "I have to go talk to my neighbor, anyway, see if she'll be able to take care of Evie…now that Sean's probably going to wind up in jail." She winked at Marlena and pulled a Harvard sweatshirt over her head.

Marlena gave Sara a sympathetic smile and watched her friend leave. Then she went to work. 

She started with the kitchen, in the cabinet under the sink, where the household cleaners were usually located. The door was child-locked and Marlena had to jimmy it a little before it came open all the way. All she found were bottles of C-Thru, Orange Clean, Kaboom, Lysol and a large box of SwifferMitts. She opened and shook all the bottles and no white powder was found anywhere. She looked through packages of sponges and inside paper towel rolls. 

She opened every kitchen drawer, emptied each once and shook them out. Nothing. She sprayed all the knifes with the luminol. Nothing. She unfilled cabinets, looked in every bowl, every nook and cranny, behind and in every box of cereal. Nothing. 

The living room was neat and clean and Marlena tired to be careful as she sifted through a catalogue of video cassettes, CD's and magazines, opening and shuffling everything. She shook out each blanket and unzipped each pillow cover and looked for re-sewn seams in the pillows. Nothing. So far Sara was looking squeaky-clean, and Marlena began to feel relieved. 

The bathroom was just as immaculate, albeit there was a pile of outdated Popular Science and Cosmo magazines beside the sink, as well as a few Disney, J.C. Penny and Home Goods catalogues. A packed wicker basket of children's books were placed by the bathtub, inside which were several bath toys, toy sponges and a plastic box of soap crayons that laid open on one of the ledges. "E-V-I-E-S-I-D-L-E" was spelled out on the tile wall inside the tub in red soap crayon in large childish scribble. So far, those were the only clues that showed someone that a child lived here. Beside Evie's name, in blue crayon, was "S-A-R-A-S-I-D-L-E", written in a much more adult hand. The name was followed by the letters of the alphabet.

The sink cabinet was the same as the kitchen: simple cleaning supplies behind a child-proofed door.

Marlena looked in the medicine cabinet, found the usual: Advil, Aleve, Robitussin, NyQuil, children's Tylenol, Tums, Folic Acid, tampons, pregnancy tests—

Wait, what was that?

Marlena picked up the box. Yes, there was a box of pregnancy tests, real and in her hand. In a package of two, there was one missing. What was this doing in Sara's medicine cabinet?

Marlena replaced the box and closed the medicine cabinet. Then she opened it again, to make sure that wasn't a figment of her imagination. 

She opened every bottle of pills, poured it's contents into her hand and inspected them. She picked each pill up, held it in the light, turned it in her hand and replaced it back into the bottle. No white powder. Her neck was beginning to ache but she continued her work. 

She dumped out the garbage pail, looking for the missing pregnancy test. She sifted through, afraid it had been disposed of already, until she found it. It was all the way at the bottom, wrapped in toilet paper and a lot of it, at least a three feet. 

The test was positive. 

Marlena reached into her field kit and bagged the pregnancy test, her heart pounding. Sara was pregnant? Something didn't settle right. This was obviously a recent discovery for Sara herself. The garbage couldn't be very old, despite how much junk was piled on top of the test. Marlena wound up estimating it was about a week or two old, due to the garbage pickup schedule. She bagged the test stick and continued.

Marlena moved to the bedrooms, going to Sara's first. It clearly distinguished who Sara was. The room was painted a soft but bright blue and the furniture was white. The bedspread consisted of large eight-by-eight squares of many shades of blue, green and purple and four overstuffed pillows were placed at the carved headboard. There were a few posters on the western wall beside two windows: one advertising a Robert Palmer concert circa 1984, another for Sarah MacLachlan at 1997 Lilith Faire and a third was Tori Amos Concert Tour 2003. The night tables on either side of the bed held potted plants: a fern on the right and a cactus on the left. Over the headboard of the platform bed was a lamp in the shape of bright red lips. Beside the bed was a large bookcase crammed with hundreds of books, many of them forensic textbooks, plus a row of fantasy novels by Anne McCaffrey, Mercedes Lackey and Terry Brooks, another of Anne Rice and Stephen King horrors and James Patterson mysteries and two thick volumes entitled _Shakespeare's Comedies _and_ Shakespeare's Tragedies._ Curious, Marlena plucked the last two tomes from the shelf. She opened the _Comedies_. An inscription was written in bold black ballpoint pen:

__

Sara—

For the laugher we've shared through the years…

Marlena opened the _Tragedies_ and there was another one:

__

…and the tears we've shared even more

From, Grissom.

Grissom, huh? Typical gift from a man like him. Marlena had known it was his habit to quote Shakespeare and so often that she joked, "This is science, not English lit."

Marlena carefully flipped through the pages of the Tragedies book. Right between _Hamlet_ and _MacBeth_ were a collection of letters. Curious, she opened one after the other and skimmed them. They were more or less the same: love letters, worn and unset, from Sara to Grissom. They all began differently—from _To Grissom_ to _My Dearest Beloved Gil_—but they all ended the same with, _All My Love, Sara_. But gradually, the greetings became hard, the sign-offs brusque and the contents callous. The plummeted to _Fuck off Grissom _and_ Hoping You Rot In Hell, Sara_. The handwriting was less flowery, more scribbled in anger. 

__

You've hurt me for the last time…I spit on you and your decency...you turn my stomach now…I won't allow you to hurt me again, ever…you don't deserve to have me or Evie or anyone in your life…you are lower than the maggots you'd rather study than be with me…one day I will make you regret hat you have done to me…you've hurt me for the last time.

The letters scared Marlena. She gingerly put each unfolded note in a separate evidence bag, as if the notes would jump up and bite her with their venomous words. 

The dresser had five drawers a large oval mirror over it and the top was covered with photographs: many of Evie, several childhood pictures of Sara herself, including one of her with Catherine Willows and another of her sitting in the sand on the beach in a skimpy bikini, peering at the camera over her Jackie O sunglasses, her lips pursed in a kiss.

One caught Marlena's interest. The picture, in a purple frame, was of a very young Sara, perhaps she was eleven or twelve years old. She was crammed onto a very small, cushy loveseat between two other girls. They were all laughing, their mouths wide open and eyes squinted, heads thrown back. The girl on Sara's right was blond and a bit chubby, the one on the left was Asian, sporting a pair of wire-framed glasses. Marlena wondered who those girls were. There were no other pictures of Sara with either girl.

Marlena opened every drawer and shifted through the undergarments, socks, pantyhose in the first drawer, t-shirts and turtlenecks in the second, sweaters and sweatshirts in the third, jeans and slacks in the fourth, pajamas in the fifth. 

Though she didn't find any strychnine or anything suspicious, she did find some objects she would bet her salary on that Sara had been looking for for a number of weeks: an extra set of keys, a Craig David CD case, tube of Sunburst Coral lipstick, a gold cuff earring missing its mate, a rhinestone-studded bangle and a silver ring with a Celtic knot perched on it. She also found a plain white envelope in the way back of the second drawer, quite buried. It was not sealed, only folded closed, so Marlena opened it. It turned out to contain a group of photographs.

There were two photographs that caught her eye—the dates on both, at the bottom right-hand corner, in red LCD numbers, read 5-12-94. The first one was a faraway shot of a couple smiling into the camera, in front of Dodger Stadium. Marlena couldn't make out who they were until she saw the second photograph. It was closer, showing the couple more than the stadium. It was a man and woman, arms around each other. Both were wearing jeans, Dodgers hats and sunglasses. The man wore a plain white shirt and the woman was wearing a Dodgers baseball jersey: #15, Shawn Green. Marlena recognized the woman immediately: it was Sara, of course. A very young Sara, in her early twenties. The man, Marlena had trouble recognizing. With the hat and the sunglasses, it was hard to tell. 

Marlena flipped the picture over and read the handwriting on the back: feminine, round and loopy—this was Sara's script. The paragraph was written lightly with a blue Bic pen, some things were smeared but most was legible:

__

Dodgers game with G—. They played the Diamondbacks and lost. Afterwards we went for a quick dinner at Mick's and shared a pizza and a few beers. We fed quarters in the ancient jukebox that plays only really bad country/pop songs and danced. I didn't know he could dance. Actually, he can't. He moves funny. I don't think he's ever danced before in his entire life. But he surprised me. He is full of surprises. The fact that he tried to dance touches me so much. I love him.

G—. The initial should have been obvious: Grissom. But Marlena had trouble believing the slim, tanned, muscular man in the baseball cap and sunglasses was Gil Grissom. She felt a tug at her heartstrings. Sara sounded madly in love with him.

Every picture was of Sara and Grissom. At bars, at restaurants, one at a concert, a few more at Dodger Stadium. Holding hands, embracing, heads-on-the-shoulder. They looked very much in love, like two high schoolers. 

Sighing heavily, Marlena replaced the pictures and bagged the envelope. She turned the picture over in the bag and stared at the paragraph again. 

Moving on, Marlena searched the closet. She shook out each article of clothing that Sara had meticulously arranged by category. Skirts in order of length—shortest to longest; tank tops to long-sleeved peasant blouses; mini-dresses to cocktail dresses. The floor held a row of shoes, tennis slippers to sneakers to sandals to high heels. Marlena checked inside each pair, heel to toe. She picked up a beautiful, silky African-print skirt that had fallen to the floor from it's rightful hanger and held it up. It was heavier than she thought it would be, for a garment with such thin material. She shook it out and heard three things. One was the faint chime of the small copper bells that were sewn to the bottom of the hem of the skirt. The second was the grainy, maraca-like sound of shifting sand along with the crinkling of plastic wrap. Marlena was confused and shook it out again. The bells continued as did the shifting and crinkling. She flipped the skirt inside out and shook it again. This time, the bells were muffled and the crinkling and shifting were louder. Then Marlena looked down and realized why the skirt felt so heavy. Something was sewn inside the hem. 

It was a high hem and felt thick as Marlena poked it. There was definitely a plastic bag in there. Marlena went to her field kit, skirt in her left hand, and found an X-acto knife. She put it in her right hand, made a slit in the hem and saw a portion of, as she suspected, a plastic bag. With the knife she speared it open. A fine, white powder spilled out in a thin line. Alarmed, Marlena dropped her knife and used that hand to catch the falling powder and reacted so fast that the powder did not touch the carpet. With a sigh of relief, she turned the skirt so that it would not spill and laid it on the dresser. Marlena took an envelope from her kit and tipped the powder in her hand into it. Her blood was beating in her ears. _White powder_. In Sara's home. Marlena took some Scotch tape she kept into her kit and patched the tear she'd made in Sara's skirt. Then she put the whole skirt into an evidence bag. 

Marlena didn't know what to do. She hoped and prayed it was cocaine and that Sara had gotten it from Sean. She actually prayed that Sara did lines with her ex. Prayed that it was not strychnine and prayed that Sara did not kill the man she loved, the possible father of her child, and, perhaps, the father of her child-to-be.

Biting her lip, she returned to the closet and scoured it with her eyes, gloved hands and Mag-Lite. Her heart sank when she found what she'd hoped she never would: a pair of worn Aquila boots. Sara had hidden them in a new Sketcher's shoebox, inside a garbage bag full of clothes that was marked "Good Will".

"Oh, Sara…" Marlena whispered. 

With a heavy heart, as she gathered evidence, Marlena dreaded she had just confirmed her worst fear: having to convict one of her friends as a murderer. 


	20. Come Together

After seeing off Lady Heather, Breeze went to the break room and passed out on a chair. She crossed her arms on the table and rest her head on them and groaned into her forearm. She imagined herself on her parents' farm in Oregon, wide open spaces and nobody around for miles. No cell phones or murder suspects for miles. 

"I wanna go home," she whined. 

"I know how you feel," Sasha said, rubbing his forehead. He tipped his head back and closed his eyes. He propped his feet up onto the chair beside him. 

"Yeah? Do you feel like there's a mac truck bursting through your forehead like an alien out of a tangelo?"

"…No…"

"Thought so."

Marlena found her team ten minutes later, passed out in the breakroom like kindergarteners at naptime. The air conditioner buzzed delightfully and she could see why they chose to crash in here. All she could think about was what Grissom would say. 

"You guys," she reprimanded, shaking her head. "What is this? Sleepytime Station?" 

"Might as well be," replied Sasha. "Would you mind pulling out the milk and cookies while we're napping, Miss Reagan?"

"I want chocolate milk," Breeze raised her hand weakly and then dropped it at her side as if it was made of lead.

"Do you see anyone else napping?" Marlena spread her arms, the palms of her hands up.

Breeze opened one eye. "I do."

"Who?"

She pointed. "Sasha is."

"Breeze…"

"Marlena, I haven't slept in two days," Breeze complained uncharacteristically. "I've been on permanent sugar rush and I'm starting to come down. My cats feel neglected. Plus, do you know how pissed off my dogs are that I'm not in bed every night?"

"I would be pissed too," Sasha said, "if the only one sleeping with me is my dog."

Breeze attempted to smack him, but missed miserably and her hand landed with a _thwack_ on the table. 

Marlena kept her cool, "Don't make me pour Red Bull down your throat."

Sasha opened his eyes. "I'm up. I'm up."

Marlena grinned to herself. It was an empty threat of course, but she knew how much Sasha hated Red Bull and the solitary thought of it being force-fed to him was enough to get him moving.

"What's up, Master and Commander?" Sasha put his feet down.

Breeze picked up her head so eagerly that Marlena expected her to have a tail to wag like a puppy expectant of a treat. 

"You guys aren't going to like this," Marlena groaned as she sank into another chair to Breeze's right. 

"What?" 

Marlena took a deep breath and explained everything, from the pregnancy test to inscriptions in the Shakespeare books to the Dodger Stadium pictures, from the powder in the skirt to the Aquilas and the love/hate letters. She even included what Sara had said about Sean's drug usage. Breeze and Sasha listened, shocked and soundless.

When she was done. Marlena felt weak. Sasha's jaw dropped.

"You're right," Breeze shook her head. "I _don't_ like this."

"The killer was right under our nose the whole time," Sasha said in a flat voice. 

"Well now, we don't know what the white stuff is yet," Marlena said. 

"Lemme tell ya something, Marlena," Sasha said irately. "It ain't gonna be powdered sugar." He mumbled a few choice words in Russian under his breath, something he only did when he was really, really steamed.

"I just ran them down to Greg," Marlena disclosed. "He's working on it right now, said he'd find me as soon as he knew."

"Damn straight."

"I just have one more thing I want to do before we pinpoint Sara as the murderer. Just to confirm. Come on. This could make or break the case."

"I don't know why I didn't see this before," Marlena said excitedly. "Okay. On the left is the Aquila print I lifted from Grissom's home. On the right is the Aquila print Sasha took from Sean Gentileschi way back when the little coke-snorter was here for interrogation. What do you see?" 

The two CSI's sat back and stared at the comparison on the SmartBoard Marlena had put in front of them. She had pulled the prints from the database. Breeze got it first. She stood and began making marks with the red pointer.

"The one on the left is faded. Also, there is more pressure put on the middle of the print," she explained. "You can sort of see the outline of a much smaller foot, one that doesn't belong in a men's size ten shoe." She made an outline in red. She was right. Though the print started at the heel pretty normal, the foot got more narrow and ended too soon before it got to the toe. 

"Right," Marlena said. "I examined the bottom of the shoe I found in Sara's closet. The bottom was worn to almost nothing, almost no tread. The eagle was nearly gone, which is the emblem found on the sole of an Aquila boot. Here it looks a little blotted. Now," Marlena went to the computer, moved Sean's print away and replaced it with a print she had taken from one of Sara's sneakers, "this is what the shoeprint of one of Sara's well-fitting women's size six shoes." Marlena took the blue pointer and drew two lines: one from the toe of Sara's sneaker to the toe of the footprint Breeze had outlined on the Aquila, and one to and from the heels. "See how they match up?"

Sasha stood and came to get a closer look. "Yeah."

"Okay," Marlena went back to the computer, back to Sean's print. "This was from Sean wearing his Aquila boot. See how new the print looks? You can clearly see the eagle outlined on the sole and the treads on the heel and toe. And there's an equal amount of pressure from tip to tip, making the eagle more visible. This one, the one from Grissom's apartment, has little pressure applied, especially around the edges. The most pressure is near the center, where Sara's foot would be, since she's wearing a shoe way too big for her feet. The footprint matches up with Sara's regular print…kids, how many more signs do we need?" Marlena was out of breath. "This is it. This proves Sara was in Grissom's apartment. She tried to frame Sean using his shoes."

Breeze and Sasha gave each other nervous looks.

"Marlena," Sasha spoke up. "Are you sure you want to do this? I mean, Sara's a big name around here."

"So was Grissom."

"It seems so…hokey. So tabloid-worthy," he continued. "You name Sara, you put two careers on the line: yours and hers."

"Make that four," Breeze said. "We helped in the investigation too, Sasha. Let's not put all the blame on Marlena."

Sasha pursed his lips, knowing she was right. "I don't want to do this. Let's call it a cold case."

"Sasha! We can't do that!" Breeze exclaimed. "I'd rather name Sara than call it a cold case."

"If we call it a cold case, nobody gets hurt."

"Except Grissom. He deserves justice too. He suffered the most."

"He's not suffering anymore, Breeze. He's dead."

"No shit! Sasha, you can't call a cold case unless you don't have enough evidence on any suspect."

"I know that. But what if the powder Marlena found is cocaine, not strychnine?" Sasha said. "Then it's gonna have to be called a cold case. The only person we found with strychnine was Solange and it didn't even belong to her, it was her sister's, a sister who doesn't even know Grissom. Solange gave it to Lady Heather who has no motive to kill whatsoever."

"Do you _know_ how many people are expecting us to solve this, flat out?" 

"Oh yeah, _so_ many people," Sasha rolled his eyes. "Maybe they'll write a book about it."

"Someone already is," Marlena said. "We're writing our own. We wrote the beginning and the middle. Now it's time for us to write the end."

"It's not going to be easy, getting Sara to confess like this. Or even getting her to talk about Grissom," Breeze said. "You saw how she acted at the memorial service. She ran out crying," she added for Sasha's benefit.

"So I heard," he said.

"We're going to have to wait until Sara returns to work," Marlena said, "which will be tomorrow. Meanwhile, let's gather our evidence so we can present it in a reasonable manner."

"On it," Breeze said, volunteering her services. 

"Sasha, I want you to help me confront Sara."

Sasha's eyes bugged out, "No freakin' way."

"Sasha!" 

"I'm sorry, I just—"

"Too freakin' bad," five-foot-five Marlena seized six-foot-nine Sasha by the arm and pulled him up out of his chair, not an easy feat for her. "Breeze? Get going please?"

"Sure, no problem," Breeze said, stifling a laugh. 

"And _you_—" Marlena hissed at Sasha. She pulled him down to her level and was about to say something nasty when her beeper went off. She looked down and saw Greg's name, followed by the word _urgent_. "And _you_ are _so_ lucky."


	21. The Confession

Marlena had to practically drag Sasha down to Greg's lab when she was paged. Her test results on the white powder were in and her heart was pounding.

"Greg," Marlena begged as she forced Sasha into a chair. She leaned on Greg's desk. "Please. Give me some good news."

Greg handed her a piece of freshly printed paper, still hot from the laser printer. "You're really something else, Marlena."

"I know," she murmured and stared at the report. It was a match for the white powder found in Solange and Isabeau's kitchen and Lady Heather's garden. She handed it to Sasha who was sitting beside her. He read it and gave a low whistle. 

"Strychnine."

Greg looked from Sasha to Marlena to Sasha again. "So…what now?"

"Now," Marlena sighed. "Now we find Sara." She turned on her heels and took off as if someone had lit a fuse beneath her.

"Sara," Greg shook his head as he watched Marlena leave. "I can't believe it." 

"_You_ can't? I can't!" Sasha exclaimed.

Sara was in her office, gathering up some papers to take to home with her while she spent the rest of her day off. Marlena knocked softly, tried to act casual.

"Hey," Sara said brightly. "Find anything interesting today?" 

Marlena shot Sara a friendly smile, "Uh, I found some pictures and I'm really interested in _them_. D'you think you could help me out? I found them in your apartment. I'd like to know who's in them."

Sara smiled. "Sure." 

Marlena slid the photographs hidden in her jacket pocket that she had taken from Sara's apartment towards her, one by one.

The first: a young hippie couple sitting on a porch swing, shaggy haired and dressed in the style of the late seventies, with a dark haired baby sitting between them in a long beige dress.

"Me, as a baby, with my parents Kathleen and David," Sara said, smiling. "I was about ten months old."

The second: a bored-looking Goth girl in fishnets and a form-fitting black dress, black lipstick and heavy eyeliner, lying on a couch with a cigarette in one hand and her head lying on a boy's lap, another Goth in leather pants and a tight-fitting red shirt. He too wore heavy eyeliner. His long black hair hung in his eyes. 

"Oh, jeez. My Gothic phase," Sara sighed. "Ran around calling myself Sabrina, Lady of the Darkness, wouldn't answer to my real name. Drove my parents nuts. Lasted from high school till Harvard. That's my old boyfriend Christian. He's an ad exec now somewhere in California."

The third: two beaming young girls, holding hands, in matching pink-and-burgundy peasant dresses, faces nearly identical, standing in the middle of a flower garden.

"My cousin Bonnie and me, standing in the garden beside my uncle's beach home. We were both six here. This was taken during the summer of '77, when our families got together in Pacifica. It was a two hour drive but worth it if I got to see Bonnie and her sister Rose. We were inseparable."

The fourth: the one in the purple frame, of three laughing pre-teen girls squished onto a small couch.

"Ah, this is one of my favorites," Sara pointed at each girl as she spoke their name. "Astrid." The blond girl. "Midori." The Asian girl. "And myself." The brunette.

The fifth: the couple standing in front of San Diego stadium. 

Sara's smiling face disintegrated like sugar in a mug of tea. She picked up the photograph, fear in her eyes. "Me…and…and Grissom."

"Grissom?" Marlena acted surprised.

Sara pursed her lips and put the picture back on the table, face-down.

"Do you want to talk?" Marlena asked. 

"No."

"C'mon. This is a great picture. I'd love to hear the story behind it."

"No."

"Sah-rah," Marlena said in a sing-song voice. "You can't keep secrets from me. Not in this line of work."

A hard stare. "So I like the Dodgers. B.F.D."

"Oh, it _is_ a big fuckin' deal. We know about your relationship with Grissom, this picture is living proof of more than a one-night stand between you two."

"Who is we?" 

"Breeze, Sasha and I."

"Should I give you a cookie and care? You know about me and Grissom. You know that Evie is not Sean's daughter and that Sean is pissed because I was having an affair with Grissom. Miss Scarlet, in the library, with the wrench. So you know."

"I know a lot of things," Marlena's voice was like the surface of an ice-skating rink—cool, smooth and unyielding.

"Tell me, Marlena," Sara glowered, "what _do_ you know?"

Marlena got authorization to drag Sara into the interrogation room. She had Sara sit in the accused's chair. Kenyon Browning and Cameron Howe were in position. 

"Tell me why I'm here and being treated like a common criminal," Sara snapped.

"Because you are one," Marlena retorted. "Or, at least, you will be."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Sara, I'm shocked. We're both CSI. Did you really think you could pull that naïve innocence bullshit on me? Come on, we both know it doesn't work that way."

Sara looked down at her lap.

"I was just wondering Sara," Marlena spoke slowly, icily. "Why _did_ your husband leave you?"

"Shut up," flared Sara.

"Was it because you were more married to your work?"

"Shut up!"

"Was it because you were a lousy housekeeper?"

"Stop!"

"Or was it because he found out Evie wasn't his child?"

"Stop!" Sara roared, standing angrily. Tears ran down her cheeks, zigzagging wildly. "Stop it! How _dare_ you!"

"How dare _I_? Sara, sweetie, at least I didn't commit murder." Marlena kept her cool as she watched Sara's tiny hands clench into fists. "May I see your wrists?"

Sara remained silent and returned to her seat.

"Let's not play the stupid game, hon. We both know what happens when you refuse."

Reluctantly, Sara put her hands on the table and pulled up her sleeves. Purple-and-gray blotches surrounded the pale wrists of Marlena's coworker like irregular bracelets.

"Ooh, that looks like it hurt," Marlena pouted. "How'd you get those, Sara?"

Again, Sara refused to speak. This was getting to be like pulling teeth.

"Listen, we have evidence that points to you as the killer of Gil Grissom. You might as well spill the story before you get into deeper shit than you are now," Marlena said. "You know what Nick says: 'when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging,'" she pressed when Sara remained silent.

"I loved him," Sara said finally after an excruciating pause. "I really, really did. Not the way the others loved him. I—he loved me too. Or I though so."

It was Marlena's turn to be silent. She knew the truth, of course, but to hear it from Sara was even more riveting. 

"I was only married to Sean for a few years. I didn't love Sean; he was just a diversion to keep my mind off Gil. I used him. When I became pregnant, I _knew_ it was Gil's child. Sean had no idea, obviously, and thought the baby was his. Evie was born and Sean became skeptical. _He_ had the testing done. When he found out he wasn't Evie's father, yes, he left.

"I went to Gil, he comforted me and I told him _he_ was the father, not Sean. I _knew_ Gil was the father, the dates matched and everything. There was no way in hell Evie could be anyone else's. I thought he believed me, but he _denied_ her. He denied _me_!

"'We were careful, Sara,' he said. 'I couldn't have gotten you pregnant. It's not possible.'

"I made threats. I threw fits. I swore I'd make him regret denying Evie. All I did was have DNA testing done and I proved that she was his daughter. If I didn't know, if I wasn't sure that she was his, I wouldn't have named her after his _mother_."

Marlena couldn't keep her eyes widening in surprise. So that's why it was so important for her to name her daughter Evelyn. 

"Once Gil discovered Evie was his, he just withdrew. He refused to acknowledge her at all. Didn't talk about her. Acted almost afraid of her. _He didn't love her_. We continued our affair, however. I couldn't keep away from him. It was all going good until…I found out I was…_pregnant_."

Marlena felt her blood turn to ice. 

"Gil became rigid. Again he sang the it's-not-possible song. We fought. That's where these bruises came from. He grabbed me by the wrists so I wouldn't strike him. That's why I have these bruises. I dug my nails into his arm, scratched him."

"So how'd you do it?" Marlena asked coolly, not breaking her tough expression. "We know you used strychnine."

Tears poured from Sara's eyes as she admitted her crime, "I took a little strychnine from the bag that Lady Heather left there. I sprinkled a it into one of his pill bottles. I forget which one. I also crushed up some of the same pill, mixed it with strychnine and then put it into gel caps."

"You were wearing Sean's old boots," Marlena said. "To frame him perhaps?"

Sara looked away. 

"You were unaware he had bought a new pair. Thought those were the only one, huh?" 

"Shut up, please."

"And you did this to Grissom because…?"

"Because Gil doesn't know how to love!" Sara exclaimed angrily. "He never really said he loved me, only when I was screwing him and sometimes not even then! It didn't matter if I loved him! He never looked at Evie, never hugged her or held her! Can you imagine what that's like, being four years old and denied by two fathers? He was her real father and he was killing her! Gil was killing Evie, so I killed Gil, for the pain he caused…to both of us," Sara buried her face in her hands. "Gil was a miserable man and I gave him what he deserved: a death certificate!"

Marlena stole a glance at the one-way mirror, behind which Breeze and Sasha were listening. She hoped Catherine, Nick and Warrick were there too, listening to this startling confession. Her curiosity overwhelmed her and excused herself from the interrogation room.

"It's a boy, you know," Sara murmured as Marlena put her hand to the door handle. "I had a sonogram last week. Gil would have had a son. I wanted to give him a son."

Embarrassed, Marlena hurriedly left the room and went behind the one way mirror. Her wish had come true when she saw what was left of Grissom's team there, along with Breeze and Sasha. 

Catherine was crying, "It's like loosing Gil all over again."

"Just can't believe it," Warrick sighed, his head hung low. "It just doesn't seem possible for our sweet little Sara to, you know…" he raked his forefinger across his neck. 

"Especially in this line of work," Nick muttered. "You'd think she would be smarter than that."

"Good job," Kenyon congratulated her. "You got her."

"Why do I feel so guilty?" Marlena asked to no one in particular. 

"Don't," Sasha reprimanded. "We got her; she confessed; she'll rot in jail."

"Again with your mouth," scolded Breeze. "I bet you have not one compassionate bone in your body."

"This job isn't about compassion, little princess. It's about justice and people getting their just desserts."

"Hey, children?" Nick snapped. "The kindergarten is down the hall." He turned to Marlena. "Listen, Marlena, we all know and love Sara but then we have our job. As tough as it may seem to accept, she's your girl. You got her. You _three_ got her." Nick looked up and nodded at Breeze and Sasha. "So, book her."

"But what happens to Evie and the baby?" Marlena wondered.

"That's for the courts to decide," Warrick said. "She doesn't get a get out of jail free card just because she's pregnant, you know."

"Evie will go to social services until she's placed with family," Catherine explained. "If she's lucky, she'll go to Sara's parents." Her voice was shaky, trying to hold back another dam of tears. 

Regardless of the stainless steel exteriors of her fellow CSI's, Marlena could see they were still, mercifully, human. Flesh and bones. They had just gotten over the death of their father-figure and were painfully close to loosing a baby sister. 

"Kenyon," Marlena turned to Detective Browning. "Will you do the honors?"

She and Detective Browning re-entered the interrogation room, followed by Sasha and Breeze.

"Sara Lucille Sidle, you are under arrest for the murder of Gilbert Thatcher Grissom. You have the right to remain silent…"

As he led Sara away, Marlena felt a great deal of weight being lifted from her chest and shoulders. Sasha wrapped his arms around her in a rare gesture of affection as she cried quietly. 

"It's over, Marlena," he assured her. "_You_ did it."


	22. Epilogue

****

A/N: To my dearest, faithful fans (a.k.a. anyone who's ever reviewed this story—those of you who read and didn't…pfft on you), you guys have been so nice to me with all your reviews. _Deadly Desire_ was my very first "CSI" fanfic! I worked six long months on it and I can't believe I actually completed it in a timely fashion! It started out as a simple idea and I played with it like a kitten and a string, wondering if I had enough courage to actually kill my foxy Grissom. Turns out I did. However, to make up for the lack of Grissom in this fic, my next one (which will debut before Thanksgiving) will revolve completely around him!

Anyway, I'm the World's Biggest Procrastinator and all your reviews pushed me to finish until, "Hey! I wrote a book!" (well, not a book…you know what I mean). Anyway, I'm putting this song as the epilogue because, well, what else is there to tell? "Sunny Came Home" to me is the epitome of Marlena's character, a tough girl trying to make a "few small repairs". I thank you again for your loyalty…as _Deadly Desire_ comes to a close…

Sunny came home to her favorite room   
Sunny sat down in the kitchen   
She opened a book and a box of tools   
Sunny came home with a mission   


She says days go by I'm hypnotized   
I'm walking on a wire   
I close my eyes and fly out of my mind   
Into the fire 

Sunny came home with a list of names   
She didn't believe in transcendence   
It's time for a few small repairs she said   
Sunny came home with a vengeance 

She says days go by I don't know why   
I'm walking on a wire   
I close my eyes and fly out of my mind   
Into the fire   


Get the kids and bring a sweater   
Dry is good and wind is better   
Count the years, you always knew it   
Strike a match, go on and do it 

Oh, days go by I'm hypnotized   
I'm walking on a wire   
I close my eyes and fly out of my mind   
Into the fire   
Oh, light the sky and hold on tight   
The world is burning down   
She's out there on her own and she's alright   
Sunny came home   
Sunny came home... 


End file.
